


To Pretend to Be Normal

by KingMTT



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ADHD Mettaton, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mettaton's not okay but he gets better, NPD Mettaton, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Recovery, Slice of Life, The cat is an important character, and many more! - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingMTT/pseuds/KingMTT
Summary: “J-just for a week,” Alphys pleaded, claws tapping nervously together, folded in the universal gesture of begging. “J-just to keep an eye on hi-him - n-nothing else!... I just-just r-really don’t want him t-to be alone right nn-n-now...""I’m-I’m worried about him.”
Relationships: Mettaton/Papyrus (Undertale)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 40
Collections: Papyton Fics





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

> [closes my book and reclines back on my large armchair] hello
> 
> I wanted to write something more Papyton focused and happier than the other fic I have going on right now so! We're doing this one! 
> 
> This fic is a happy one, I promise! It just gets worse before it gets better because Mettaton kind of isn't okay. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for the fic include;  
> -depression/mental illenss  
> -suicidal thoughts  
> -alcoholism (because of course it does it's Mettaton)

“J-just for a week,” Alphys pleaded, claws tapping nervously together, folded in the universal gesture of begging. “J-just to keep an eye on hi-him - n-nothing else! An-and he al-already t-told me he’d be f-fine with it, an-and that he-he’d feed you and ev-everything! H-his place is really n-nice!” She turned her attention from papyrus to her feet, mumbling to no one in particular, “H-honestly I-I’m kind of je-jealous…”

Papyrus was sat in the opposing chair from her, one leg folded over the other, elbow on his knee and rubbing his chin in theatrical thought. From the kitchen, the sounds of loud crashing and shouting drowned out the ambient noise of the television. Not that anyone had been paying much attention to it anyways. Sans and Undyne had drawn the shortest straws when it came time to pick who cleaned up tonight and did dishes, by the sounds of it Papyrus was probably going to be adding “new plates” to the shopping list again. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. He didn’t mind, though, as he always tried to look on the bright side. Bright side! The fact their dishes were constantly being cycled through made for a very interesting cupboard!

“I am not against the idea,” Papyrus mused, once the arguing in the kitchen had quieted down enough that he didn’t have to shout to be heard, “However I am confused on why you are asking such a task of me instead of yourself or perhaps one of Mettaton’s cousins.”

“U-uhm, w-w-well...act-actually you were my uhm…” Alphys’s voice got a bit quieter, “L..last choice?” She flushed when she said that aloud, hands flying from her half finished plate of spaghetti and cupping around her muzzle, “Oh-oh no, th-that sounded m-mean.”

“Oh, not at all!” Papyrus reassured her, setting aside his own empty plate. “I understand wht you are saying! As much as I would like to cultivate a deepr friendship with Mettaton, I do not know him as well.”

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when Papyrus had gone from head-over-heels superfan to respectful admirer of Mettaton. If anyone had to guess, it probably was somewhere around the time Alphys had brought him to spaghetti night and he’d cried over how soft their couch was, and how nice they were that they invited Undyne and Alphys to dinner like this every week. Why couldn’t he have friends that invited him over to dinner every week? (Alphys had informed the skeleton brothers that Mettaton...hadn’t been exactly sober...To which Sans responded something along the lines of “if I were into blackmail-”)

Of course, Papyrus still adored Mettaton to pieces, there was no denying that! But now that he knew the monster behind the illusion a bit more as - well just that, a monster - it was easier to treat Mettaton as a very successful acquaintance rather than a flawless idol he nearly had a panic attack around if he so much as shared the same air as him. Though, unfortunately he hadn’t really seen Mettaton in a while. He’d stopped showing up to spaghetti night some time ago. Ever since moving out of Alphys and Undyne’s he’d been...rather distant, actually. Papyrus wanted to just chalk it up to the fact that it was harder to keep in contact with him now that he didn’t share a house with a mutual friend. Either way, the fact he still couldn’t really call Mettaton a “friend” per say still made him a bit nervous around him. Being around someone so prestigious still gave Papyrus a bit of a headspin.

“It-it’s just that-” Alphys continued, picking at a piece of stuck shed on her nose to keep her hands busy, “I-I wish I could, bu-but I can’t. I-I pr-promised over time at th-the lab this week, m-months ago. Napsta sa-said they were ou-ot of town to m-meet with a record la-label...and uh,” She bit her bottom lip. “H-honestly? M-Mads kind of scares me. Sh-she isn’t really the “cheer up” ty-type.” She finally got that piece of dead skin off her muzzle, trying to sound more sincere as she went right back to begging. “H-he likes you! He-he really does! I just-just r-really don’t want him t-to be alone right nn-n-now...I’m-I’m worried about him.”

“I see.” Papyrus said thoughtfully, and then bobbed his head, having made up his mind. “In that case, I would be more than happy to stay with Mettaton for the week! This is very exciting, it will be like an extra long sleepover!”

Alphys let out a long sigh of relief, deflating into the back of the couch like a pile of lizard goo as all the stress left her body in one fell swoop. She took off her glasses and rubbed at where they pressed on her nose. “O-oh thank god. N-next I was going to h-have to ask Undyne an-and I don’t ev-even want to thi-think how that would g-go...Thank you, Pap, it-it means a l-lot to me.”

“No “thank you”s are required! I am more than happy to!” Papyrus got to his feet, picking up his plate as well as taking the time to pick up Alphys’s. “I will just have to inform Sans o-”

The both of them flinched as a loud, sustained yelling rang out from the kitchen, followed by a flash of blue light, and what sounded like crunching metal. 

“Ah. Apologies, Alphys, I should check on that!” New sink! Next on the shopping list.

* * *

When Mettaton had moved up to the Surface, the MTT Resort had closed down. There was no sense to keep the lights on with nobody really living in the Underground anymore beyond a rare few. The Underground wasn’t completely abandoned, it was hard to just leave an entire society that every monster had grown up in in the dust like that. But most had made a new home for themselves on the Surface - so again, it just wasn’t worth the effort to keep the business going Underground for a select few people.

However! Not long after monsterkind had migrated to the Surface, and Mettaton had gotten his big break with the humans, had he used his considerable funds (apparently gold was extremely valuable to humans, who knew?) to buy a plot of land on the coastline and rebuild the resort from the ground up - right here on the Surface! It was an instant hint for monsters and humans alike. And! He’d even upgraded the facilities, added a few amenities. Now on top of the restaurant and burger joint that had been present on the original; it had a pool, two bars and a few other things Papyrus hadn’t really read up on. Well, considering he wasn’t going to be able to take advantage of any of it while he was here.

Nice as the place was, Papyrus’s sole destination was the penthouse on the very top floor, which is where Mettaton called home. Alphys had called the front desk ahead of time, and passed on to Papyrus that he was able to just go up whenever he got there. Papyrus shouldered his small duffel bag and double checked to make sure his car was locked before walking into the lobby of the building. Oh - hey! Mettaton had fixed the fountain! Oh..were those fish? Was that healthy for the fish? When did he get fish?

Papyrus heard a cough behind him, and he was forced to turn away from the fountain fish. It seemed Mettaton had rehired all his previous staff as well, the same hand monster was working as the receptionist, and she was giving what Papyrus could only assume was a judgmental look. Say what you will about him, Mettaton was a good employer. (Unless you happened to be a ginger cat, that is.) She pointed him in the direction of the private elevator that led to the top floor, Papyrus giving her a thumbs up, and soon enough he was on his way up. As the elevator’s doors closed, he hadn’t noticed he was jittering until just then, and he wasn’t sure if it was out of excitement or nervousness.

The elevator’s interior had a glass backing facing the shoreline below, and was lined with pink carpeting. It was probably the most scenic elevator ride Papyrus had been on in his entire life. He decided to distract himself from his nerves by watching the beach below, the beach line getting smaller and smaller and the ocean getting bigger and bigger as he went higher into the air. California was nice...but he missed the snow sometimes.

He didn’t have much time to feel homesick before the elevator dinged at him, doors sliding open to the landing. The elevator hadn’t opened up into Mettaton’s house directly, which didn’t come as much of a surprise to him, but instead a foyer of some sort. It was a vaguely square room, not much to it besides some couches, windows, and a potted plant that looked like it had one foot in the grave. Papyrus felt a bit sorry for the thing, and wondered if Mettaton would be opposed to him taking care of it. He also noticed the room was eerily...silent...It was very jarring compared to the ambient noises of hotel patrons and chattering coworkers in the lobby below. Papyrus’s loud footsteps on the carpeted floor were nearly deafening as he walked off the elevator. He found the entrance fairly easily, or at least he had to assume it was the entrance. If the pink stained double doors decorated with rose gold said anything. 

He looked, and couldn’t find much in way of what could’ve been a doorbell. So, he opted for the classic knocking. Papyrus tapped his foot as he waited for the owner to open up…  
  
And waited…

And…

...Waited…

This was taking much longer than he was expecting. 

He’d been standing here for at least five minutes. Was Mettaton not home? That would’ve been odd, he knew he was coming. Papyrus was about ready to knock again, maybe Mettaton hadn’t heard him? Before the door finally opened up.

“So sorry about the wait, darling. I- oh!” Mettaton blinked in surprise when he saw Papyrus waiting for him in the doorway. He was holding a fluffy pink wallet and a fistfull of bills, his hair tied back in a messy ponytail with a bright pink scrunchie. Papyrus had never seen him wear his hair like that before, and for a moment was entranced by the oddness.

“Apologies, darling, I thought you were room service.” Mettaton reached behind his head and pulled out the scrunchie, looping it around his wrist for safekeeping. Papyrus felt guilty when he realized he’d been staring, and really hoped Mettaton hadn’t fixed his hair because of that. “I wasn’t expecting you until later - oh dear, if I’d known I would’ve ordered you lunch.”

“It’s quite alright!” Papyrus reassured him, “I finished sink shopping earlier than I had expected and thought I would go ahead and come over early too!”

The words “sink shopping” gave Mettaton pause, but he chose not to ask. None of his business, didn’t want to know, nope. “Ah, well...okay then!”

Mettaton moved out of the way to let Papyrus in, walking away and towards the living room. “Make yourself at home, dear. Uhm...Pardon the mess, I really need to pick up around here more often.”

The entrance opened up into a small, sparsely decorated foyer, not too dissimilar to the one on the other side of the door. Beyond that, it opened up into Mettaton’s living room. Papyrus looked at the place in slight awe; the living room was marvelous! Wide, tall windows made up the outer wall, stretching all the way into the second story above and also all the way to the other end of the house. The interior design was, unsurprisingly, done head to toe in pink. Baby pink shag carpet, pink furniture and pink painted walls; to the side of the windows was a pink grand piano with pink sheet music. Pink pillars stretched high into the open air above and pink sheer curtains were drawn to the sides. The outside natural light provided most the lighting in the room, only helped slightly by a large contemporary chandelier with dim bulbs that hung low over the living room. Papyrus sat his bag down on a couch and went to look out the windows. It overlooked the city line rather than the ocean, which Papyrus found interesting. He thought the whole point of buying this property in specific was it’s ocean view. But, there was probably a difference between the rest of the hotel and Mettaton’s personal apartment. He had to assume this entire place was built exactly to Mettaton’s whims, and maybe he liked looking at the city more than the ocean.

As Papyrus was admiring the view, Mettaton was busying himself with tidying up the living room. Food wrappers littered the floor, and a tub of half-melted ice cream Mettaton seemed to think twice about throwing away. He straightened up the throw pillows and picked up some stuffed animals and cat toys that were scattered about.

“You can sit down, darling.” Mettaton instructed, his arm looping multiple times around his ever increasing trash pile as he continued to walk around the room. “Just, again, pardon the mess.”

Papyrus nodded, shifting aside a teddy cat that sat on one of the fluffy couches with great care and an “excuse me, sir!” before he took his seat next to it. He continued to just, look around the place for a minute. At this angle he could see the second floor better. A staircase and a small balcony walled off by waist-high glass separated it from the rest of the house. On that small balcony area Papyrus took note of a couple of chairs and a liquor cabinet, but not much else. Then again, he couldn’t really see much of it from just the bottom floor. He had to assume the guest rooms were up there, so he’d probably be seeing more of it eventually.

As lovely as this place was, he couldn’t help but think this was quite a lot of space for one person and his cat.

“I’ve never been in a penthouse before!” Papyrus said aloud, just trying to start a conversation since it had been getting a bit too quiet for his liking, “Alphys said it was nice, but wowie!”

“Not many people have.” Mettaton said in return, trying to keep his balance as he ushered his final tally to the kitchen’s trash can.

“It’s very exciting! And slightly worrying. It’s so nice I’m afraid of messing it up!” Papyrus turned his head in the opposite direction of the stairs, now he was facing a fireplace (turned off) and above it what was very likely the largest flat screen TV he’d ever seen in his life (also turned off.)

“Oh, don’t worry too much about it.” Mettaton reassured him, “You could tear this place apart for all I care, it’s not like I couldn’t just fix it. I know I’ve accidentally kicked a hole in the wall one too many times."

There was a large crash, like many glass things being broken at once, and Mettaton finally exited the kitchen, no longer bagged down with an armful of garbage. He didn’t address the noise at all, just gave the room a once over with his eyes and said “That should be good.” before plopping himself down on one of the other couches. He reclined backwards on it, kicking his feet up on one armrest and resting his head against the other.

“I’m so sorry Alphys imposed on you like this, darling. I told her to just wait until Blooky got home.” He huffed, the small burst of air blowing some strands of hair out of his face, “She worries too much, I swear.”

“As I was telling Alphys, I’m not bothered!” Papyrus reassured him. “I am more than happy to spend time with you! Even if I’m unclear on exactly why. I have not seen you in quite some time!”

Mettaton hummed and nodded, casting his gaze anywhere but Papyrus and looping his hands over his chest. Papyrus was starting to get worried again seeing that kind of reaction. Had he said something wrong? Oh dear, he’d barely been here ten minutes and he’d already done something to upset Mettaton.

“She..said she just wanted me to have the company. But I know her well enough to know she meant babysitter.” Mettaton snorted, rolling over onto his side. He took one of those throw pillows with him in the process, hugging it to himself so he could lay comfortably on his chest. “Anywho, guest rooms are upstairs. You can take your pick but the door at the end of the hall is to the master bedroom. It doesn’t have any furniture in it so...uhm, not that one. The other two are free, though.”

Papyrus nodded, pushing himself off the couch and finding his bag again, “Where’s your room, then?” He found it interesting Mettaton didn’t take the master bedroom for himself. 

“Oh, the downstairs room,” Mettaton nodded in the direction of the fireplace. Papyrus now noticing that to the right of it there was a slight dip in the wall housing a set of double doors, one of them was slightly ajar. “It’s not as extravagant as the upstairs room but, I mean, I really never go upstairs. It just makes more sense to have my room down here too , doesn’t it?”

So, Papyrus had been right! This _was_ too big of a space for one person and his cat. He wondered why Mettaton had insisted on such a large house if he only ever used half of it regularly. Or maybe even less than half of it, Papyrus had yet to see the rest of this floor. But that wasn’t really something he knew how to ask, so instead he just nodded an affirmative to what Mettaton was saying.

“Noted!” Papyrus responded, walking up the stairs at a brisk pace, he was halfway up when he heard Mettaton call out.

“Oh! Also, lunch should be here soon! Do you want me to call you down?”

Papyrus leaned against the glass-panel railing so he could call back a little bit clearer. “That would be very much appreciated!” He watched as Mettaton nodded, scooped his cellphone off the coffee table and disappeared into the kitchen with it.

You know, speaking of Mettaton’s cat. Where was Smirnoff, anyways? Papyrus hadn’t seen him since walking through the front door, which surprised him. He had only met Smirnoff a few times, but that kind of cat was...not one that you easily missed; to put it in the most kind way possible.

Papyrus had decided to take guest room one, which was located directly off the stairway landing and happened to have this floor’s washer and dryer right next to it. How convenient! Not that he hoped he’d be needing it, hopefully he’d packed enough changes of clothes for the week. Honestly, he didn’t know. He’d never stayed at someone’s house this long before! The longest he’d ever stayed at someone’s house was when he had a sleepover with Undyne for a three day weekend. But he knew Undyne, and that had only been three days. This was very much different!

Upon entering the bedroom, Papyrus was surprised to find it wasn’t blindingly pink like the rest of the house. It actually looked like a rather normal bedroom. However, the carpet wasn’t saved, Mettaton used the same baby pink shag all throughout the house. Other than that, this seemed like a fairly normal bedroom. It featured a double sized bed with a rather plain comforter, a small TV perched on a set of drawers in front of it. The bed had nightstands on either side, only one of them hosting a lamp. It also had it’s own bathroom and closet. There were rather large windows in this room too, Papyrus inspected them and found that these ones overlooked the ocean far, far below. Maybe this was all just a side effect of it being a guest room, Mettaton didn’t care too much about a room that wasn’t his matching his aesthetic to a t.

Papyrus dropped his bag on the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed, only to jump right back up when he heard a bloodcurdling yowl come out from under him. The blankets shifted around, and a little white head popped out of the edge, licking it’s chops angrily and glaring at Papyrus.

Oh! There was Smirnoff! How had he gotten in there? How _long_ had he been in there? The door had been closed, and Mettaton just said he never came upstairs. Feeling bad about sitting on him, Papyrus leaned down to pet the white beast on the head, “Hello, Smirnoff! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there!”

The cat avoided the pet, ducking away from Papyrus’s hand and growling. Continuing to glare at him because how _dare._ Or...at least Papyrus was assuming he was being glared at? It was kind of hard to tell.

Smirnoff was, as previously stated, a cat that was very hard to miss. Calling an animal Mettaton cared for so dearly ‘ugly’ felt like one of the most mean spirited things you could do to him, but he was certainly...unique? Smirnoff was a white Persian cat, with bugged out eyes that pointed in either direction and a crooked, snaggletoothed jaw. He looked very much like someone’s grandma.

Despite his strange face, or maybe in spite of his strange face, Mettaton loved the thing to death. Papyrus very distinctly remembered Mettaton not shutting up about him for a while after the cat was adopted. Smirnoff had his own Instagram page, had featured on some of Mettaton’s shows, and had his own merch. The cat was a mini celebrity all on his own. This lasted until Mettaton had gotten the suggestion that maybe cats didn’t enjoy the limelight as much as he did, and all this attention might be making him stressed out. It was the only time anyone could remember Mettaton taking a suggestion without arguing about it first. So, now Smirnoff lived a fairly normal cat life. Or normal in the terms of belonging to a super rich robot celebrity. Mettaton doted on him endlessly, and probably spent a significant portion of his earnings buying him new toys, treats, and whatever a cat could ask for. Papyrus remembered a joke being made once that Mettaton took better care of the cat than he did himself.

He wondered how true that was.

Smirnoff finally realized he wasn’t intimidating Papyrus as much as he thought he was and hopped out of the bed. The bell on his collar jingled as he shook himself out and slipped out the doorway. Not long after, Papyrus heard a high pitched gasp and a “Hi baby!” So he guessed Smirnoff had reached his destination.

After double checking to make sure his bed was truly cat free, Papyrus sat down again. Well, that had been quite exciting! But before he could get unpacked, he’d have to text Alphys and let her know he’d arrived safe and sound.

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:05pm  
I’M HERE!

Alphys  
Today @4:06pm  
Oh, you are? That was fast, I didn’t think you’d be there til at least 8...

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:06pm  
SANS AND I FINISHED REPLACING OUR SINK EARLY! I HAVE GOTTEN THE HANG OF REPLACING IT BY NOW.

Alphys  
Today @4:12  
Oh, uhm. That’s good. Uh...Undyne said to tell you sorry, by the way.

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:13pm  
NOT TO WORRY! IT WOULD NOT BE THE FIRST TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED. SINK REPLACING IS A VERY GOOD SKILL TO HAVE!

Papyrus stopped getting responses after that for some time. Right, Alphys was likely still at work. She had mentioned overtime, and he wasn’t quite sure how late that meant. He dug his phone charger out of his bag and plugged it into the wall, deciding to get unpacked as he waited for her to get a chance to text him back. He hoisted the bag from the floor up onto the bed, unzipping it all the way and folding his clothes over his arm. He’d noticed the doors to a walk-in closet on his way in. He had kind of expected he was going to be sharing this closet to some extent, Mettaton seemed like the kind of person with so many clothes that he needed all the closet space he could get. Surprisingly, it was empty save for a few hangers and some linens folded up on the top shelf.

Huh, maybe Mettaton was using the empty bedroom to store his extra clothes? Or maybe the assumption of the overly large wardrobe was just plain wrong, which, again, would’ve surprised him. Though, some to think of it, Mettaton didn’t seem to have a lot of outfits that weren’t costumes for his various shows. He didn’t really _need_ to wear clothes after all, it was mostly just for fun. Ah well, not like Papyrus was going to complain about having a large closet all to himself.

It was much bigger than the closet he had at home! You could probably slide a small mattress in here and call it a room in of itself. Though he doubted Mettaton would ever be so low on space he would need to do that. Again, the penthouse was massive. He hung up his few changes of clothes on the provided hangers, and neatly folded up his pajamas - those could probably go in the drawers outside. Walking back out of the closet, he noticed his phone screen lit up and picked up the pace a little bit - hoping it was from Alphys.

Alphys  
Today @4:30pm  
I mean, still. Uh...how’s Metta doing?

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:35pm  
HE SEEMS FINE! THOUGH, I DID JUST GET HERE. SO I CANNOT MAKE A FAIR JUDGEMENT BASED ON OUR BRIEF INTERACTION. I AM CURRENTLY UNPACKING!

Alphys  
Today @4:36pm  
That’s good. Uhm. Hey, this is gonna sound...kinda bossy but could you uhm. Stay around him as much as you can? As in uh - try to...try to avoid just hanging out in your room. Is, is that too much? I’m sorry I hope that’s not too much.

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:38pm  
NOT AT ALL! I AM SORRY FOR NOT STAYING AROUND HIM MORE, I WILL TRY TO BE QUICK IN MY UNPACKING! IT IS NOT IN MY NATURE TO BE ANTISOCIAL, I WILL ATTEMPT TO BE THE BEST HOUSE GUEST ONE CAN BE!

Alphys  
Today @4:38pm  
Okay, uh, good. I gotta go back to work, tell him I said hi, text me if you need anything. Also make sure he eats something. Thanks again, I really owe you one.

PAPYRUS  
Today @4:39pm  
GOODBYE ALPHYS!

Papyrus finished putting up his clothes and shoved the rest of the bag under the bed for now. He’d brought more stuff, but they could wait until bedtime to be put into their proper places. Enough time had passed that he was hoping the food Mettaton had order would be here by now. Sure he had eaten something before he left, but he was curious to see what kind of food rich people ate!

Making sure the door was closed behind him, Papyrus headed back downstairs. Ambient noise came from the TV situated above the fireplace as Papyrus made his way back into the living room, he saw that Mettaton was on the same couch as he had been before. The difference was this time he had a fluffy blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a styrofoam takeout box in his lap. Papyrus, following in the other’s lead, took the seat he had been in before as well.

“Hello, Mettaton! You failed to call me down for food.” Papyrus didn’t mean it as chiding, he was just trying to make some small talk, but it made Mettaton give a guilty grimace anyways.

“Ah..so I did, Apologies darling. I just figured you were busy. Uhm-” He sat up a little straighter, reaching his arm out to tap on the lid of a matching styrofoam box that sat on the coffee table. “I added a plate of pasta onto the order for you. That’s what you like, right?”

Papyrus looked to see what Mettaton was eating, it looked like a Caesar salad, and he was picking at it with a plastic black fork. So...not exactly what Papyrus had had in mind for rich people food.

“It is! Thank you, Mettaton, I appreciate it!” Papyrus picked up the box Mettaton had indicated to, opening it up and settling back on the couch. It was an alfredo dish, so not exactly his favorite, but he wasn’t about to complain about it. “Oh! Alphys told me to give you a message; she says hello!”

Mettaton curled back up in his oversized blanket, staring down at his food. “She did? She could’ve just texted me.”

“I believe she is still at work, and probably only had the time to talk to one person!” Papyrus pointed out, which didn’t seem to change Mettaton’s mood on the matter any. All he got in return was a small hum of acknowledgement.

...Maybe Mettaton just didn’t want to talk right now, he was eating after all. Or at least Papyrus had assumed he was, but upon closer inspection it looked more like he was just stirring it around with his fork and staring at it. Papyrus turned his attention to the TV instead, playing on it was a cartoon with very colorful handsome men. He believed Undyne had called it “anime”. Though in all of the animes Undyne had shown him, he didn’t quite remember any of the characters being quite so - er - robust.

“What are we watching?” Papyrus asked, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, this is…” Mettaton frowned, reaching out of his blanket cocoon again to pick up the case of a DVD set off the table. “Part two! I get them confused sometimes. It’s the only anime I like.”

Papyrus nodded, “That sounds familiar, I believe Undyne told me about it once.”

“Oh, probably, she’s the one that introduced me to it actually,” Mettaton huffed a laugh, putting the case back down and returning his hand to his lap, “In her own words “it has enough half naked men in it you’ll have to like it.” I mean, she’s right. But it has an interesting plot too. I consider myself a media aficionado, after all. If I judged shows solely based on how much eye candy it had I don’t think I would’ve gotten very far.

Papyrus nodded once more, happy that he had gotten Mettaton to talk about something. He had started to notice the star had been uncharacteristically quiet since his arrival, and he was usually a notorious chatterbox.

“I like Dio a lot - he’s not in this one - but god his later outfits really leave something to be desired. I mean, yellow is nice in moderation but goodness gracious he looks like some sort of banana clown. It especially doesn’t work since he’s a blond. Maybe I just have some sort of gay vampire bias. He’s actually gay, you know! Well, actually he’s bi, but-” Mettaton cut himself off suddenly, fiddling at something on his wrist. “Erm, I’m sorry. I must be boring you.”

“No, no, not at all!” Papyrus reassured him, “I am just not sure on how to contribute since I am unfamiliar with the show. Dio sounds cool, though! Maybe it can be something we watch together while I’m here!”

Papyrus had looked over into Mettaton’s lap to see what he had been fiddling with, and noticed what looked to be a white bracelet. Mettaton must’ve noticed him staring, because he quickly stuck his hand behind his leg to hide it from view.

He turned to Papyrus, putting his chin in the hand that hadn’t been hidden away and giving him a half-hearted grin, “Oh, maybe. That sounds fun.”

The strange bracelet wasn’t the only thing Papyrus had noticed, “You haven’t eaten any of your food.” He pointed out, remembering Alphys’s instructions about Mettaton and eating.  
  
Mettaton’s fake grin dropped, and he looked back at the food in his lap. “Hm...so I haven’t. To be honest, they messed up my order.” He flipped the lid closed on the box, and sat it down on the coffee table. Now that his lap was unobstructed, he gripped both ends of the blanket and hugged himself tightly. “Do you want it? I don’t really eat meat, I don’t like the texture.”

Huh, he hadn’t known Mettaton was a vegetarian. You learn something new every day!

Though...if Mettaton didn’t like meat - what were Glamburgers made of?

Papyrus picked up the box to inspect it. It had been stirred around for so long it was now mostly soggy lettuce with some bits of grilled chicken. It...didn’t look too appetizing.  
  
“Are you sure? I could pick out the chicken for you! Or if you are nervous to correct your order, I could make the call for you!” Papyrus really wanted to make sure Mettaton would eat, he wasn’t about to break his promise to Alphys! Plus, you know, eating was important!

“It’s fine, I’ve lost my appetite. I appreciate it, though. If you don’t want it I’ll just give the chicken to Smirnoff and throw the rest way...I hate to waste food, but oh well.” Mettaton didn’t look up from his lap. Now he had started to fold his legs into the blanket huddle too. Was he that cold? Papyrus didn’t think it was that chilly in here, but then again, skeletons weren’t too temperature sensitive. 

Wait a minute, neither were robots. Or that’s what Papyrus had assumed anyway. 

Either way, Papyrus didn’t care that much about Mettaton’s slow descent into the blanket dimension. He was more worried about the losing battle with the salad, so he had a new idea! “I’ll just make you an especially good dinner then!”

Mettaton’s shoulders jumped, eye going wide in surprise, “O-oh! Oh dear, that’s very sweet of you, hun, but you don’t have to do that.”

“I do not! But I want to!” Papyrus got up from the couch, stacking his own empty box under Mettaton’s and heading towards where he’d seen Mettaton throw his trash away earlier. “I enjoy cooking, so really, it’s no trouble at all!”

Mettaton tried to untangle himself from his self-made cozy prison to follow him. “Darling, you- AH-” he yelped as his heel was tangled up in the blanket, not ready to let it’s captor go just yet. Mettaton fell over to the ground with a loud clang, and in the time it had taken him to fully unravel himself, Papyrus had already sorted out all the chicken from Mettaton’s plate.

“No buts! I have made up my mind! Where’s Smirnoff’s food bowl?”

“Dining room, against the back wall. Tear it up a little bit for him please, poor baby has trouble chewing up big pieces. It’s why I usually give him wet f-” Mettaton paused, putting his hand to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut. “No, wait, nevermind that. We’re still on the dinner thing. Papy, lovely, I appreciate the sentiment, I really really do. But I really-”

“What did I say about buts/” Papyrus said sternly, squatting on the ground to pour the pre-torn up chunks of meat into a shallow cat dish.

“I’m-I’m not trying to be stubborn!” Mettaton stammered, having finally caught up to Papyrus, and now just standing behind him and blabbering. “I just I - I just-” He sighed, “I...don’t have anything in the house _to_ cook.”

Papyrus looked up from his task at hand, cocking an eyeridge in suspicion “I feel as if you are making excuses to deter me.”

“No, really. I’m being serious. I…” Mettaton’s face brushed a light shade of pink, and he covered his mouth with his hand to try and hide it. “I kind of live solely off takeout and room service. I hate having to do the dishes and all that cleaning and - god, just, everything associated with cooking really. It’s exhausting. The only thing you’re going to find in my fridge is cake and ice cream.”  
  
Papyrus frowned. That was a...slightly more concerning fact of the day than the vegetarian one. “Do you need to buy groceries? There’s still light in the day! I would like to cook for you at some point, even if not tonight.”

Mettaton groaned, dragging that same hand down his face. “Ohh, not today, Papy, please. I just got home yesterday, I’m very worn out.”

Got...home? When had Mettaton been away? Papyrus didn’t recall a vacation, or tour dates of any kind. If that were the case he was for sure Alphys or a TV station would’ve mentioned it by now.

Papyrus was distracted from his thoughts by a scratchy growling noise originating from his foot. Or, more precisely, by his foot. He looked down to see piercing green eyes staring in his...general direction. Smirnoff licked his teeth as if to say “move or I’ll eat you instead.” Papyrus smiled apologetically at the feline, picking himself up and moving a short distance away. He hoped the grumble he heard from Smirnoff after the fact was of appreciation. A kitty cat “thank you”, but he was probably hoping too much.

“What about tomorrow, then?” Papyrus questioned, not giving up on the notion of preparing a nice dinner for Mettaton at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the week had just started!

“Darling…” Mettaton began, “I appreciate you, I really do. It’s nice you want to cook for me but, really. I just want to rest right now.”

Mettaton started to walk back to the living room, picking up his blanket from the floor and folding it up. “You have to remember, darling, going out in public is quite the event for me. You don’t have to worry about being mobbed by paparazzi or by every fan wanting to say hi or get an autograph.” He sighed, leaving the folded up blanket on the back of the couch for now. “I adore my fans, I do, but...Like I said, I’m tired.”

The fact that Mettaton didn’t want to go out in public was shocking to hear, to say the least. Last Papyrus remembered, Mettaton adored attention of any kind. Even if it came from pushy fans and sneaky picture takers! In fact, Papyrus had distinctly remembered an interview where Mettaton mentioned one of his favorite things about being famous was that people knew him wherever he went. And he also said that being stopped by fans was something that made his day. Sure he could’ve just been saying that for the cameras, but Papyrus really didn’t think so. He’d seen Mettaton reacting to those kinds of fans first hand, and he was always very kind to them. Everything Mettaton was saying right now felt very, very out of character indeed.

“When is the last time you’e recharged?” Papyrus trotted up after him, his worry starting to bubble over into fretting. “Is your cable faulty? I’m sure Alphys has a spare! Perhaps a nap? Though that may mess up your sleep schedule at such a late hour, which is never a good thing.”

“Papyrus - please-” Mettaton was starting to get just a little bit annoyed, and he was trying very hard not to snap at the poor skeleton. He knew he was just trying to help. “I’m fine, I’ve been asleep all day. It’s-it’s emotional tiredness. Mental tiredness. Don’t you ever get socially exhausted?”

Papyrus set his jaw, thinking for a minute, and then shook his head.

“Huh.” Mettaton frowned, “Well, I do. And the point is, I don’t want to go out anywhere until I feel more up to it.”

“Ah, well, alright then.” Papyrus tried not to sound too hurt. “Uhm...what would you like to do instead, then? Maybe a board game, or you could continue telling me about your Jojos and his adventure!”

Mettaton pulled the scrunchie from before off his wrist and loosely tied his hair back into it, “You can keep watching it if you want to, I’m going to bed.”

“Bed? But didn’t you just say you’ve slept all day?” Papyrus was confused. Sure he had been the one to suggest napping, but he had also warned of ruining sleep schedules!

“Very observant.” Mettaton finished tying his hair back, perching himself on the couch as he searched through one of the drawers of a side table.

“So..why are you going back to bed?” Papyrus still wasn’t getting it.

"Oh, I don’t know. I’m bored, it’s late. What else do I have to do? Stare out the window and contemplate life for a while?” Mettaton’s voice came out dull and dry, but he’d found what he was looking for in the drawer. He pulled out some makeup remover and rubbed off the little makeup he had been wearing. It was mostly just eye shadow and mascara.

While he was doing that, Papyrus checked the time on a digital clock that was sat on that very same side table. Backlit pink numbers blinked back at him, “6:05”. Did that count as late…? Mettaton used to host night shows that would go until 3am. Did he get tired that early now?

Papyrus looked away from the clock, just in time to see Mettaton throw his used wipe to the floor. The skeleton’s eye twitched seeing Mettaton do that, but felt like calling him out on his messy behaviour was just going to make matters worse here. So he contained the neat freak in him for now, staying quiet as Mettaton got up the couch and headed in the direction of his bedroom. A gravelly meowing and a jingling noise signaled Smirnoff’s arrival, trotting up to him with his fluffy tail held high in the air. He pawed at the superstar’s leg and meowed, demanding to be picked up. Mettaton cooed, leaning down to scoop up his living mophead and cradling him against his chest, pressing a kiss to his head with an audible ‘mwah!’

“The remote to the TV should be in the drawers. I don’t remember which one. If you don’t want to keep watching this, I have cable, some DVDs in the kitchen closet, and Netflix. Ugh, I really need to cancel that subscription though. It’s so garbage nowadays.” Smirnoff purred away as Mettaton leaned back against his door, apparently this was a topic he had many thoughts on. “They keep getting rid of a lot of their actual streaming shows, you know, the thing I buy the subscription for, to put in more of their “original series”. And, I mean, I’m enamored with the idea of TV without network restrictions. Really, I am, goodness knows I’ve gotten migraines over the demands of network execs. But I just feel like that potential is being wasted on bad cartoons and superhero movie tie ins.” He shifted Smirnoff into one arm so he could talk with his hands as he continued to rant, “I could never get into the superhero stuff, personally. Don’t know why, I just can’t. Except Thor! I liked Thor, but it had a very different tone than the rest of the universe. That’s why I liked it. Stranger Things, that was a good original series. Or it was until that godawful third season. What were they even thinking? I forget who it was who tried to get me to watch that horse cartoon. I liked it at first, but it just...kind of hit a bit too close to home. I started seeing myself in the main character and started having thoughts of what if I end up like that one day and-” 

Mettaton seemed to finally realize he was rambling, taking a very deep breath before he straightened back up again. “Goodness, got a bit carried away there, didn’t I? But, anyways, I have that if there’s anything on there you’e into.”

Papyrus...chose not to ask. 

“Do you have anything other than TV?” He asked instead. He wasn’t sure TV alone would keep him occupied for the next few hours by himself. Plus, surely there must be other ways Mettaton spent his time?

“Er...I have ice cream?” Mettaton scratched his cheek, not seeming to understand the question. “You can help yourself to it, if you’d like, but the pint of vanilla is for cocktails. Probably leave that alone. I’d offer to make you one but, you don’t drink, right?”

Papyrus shook his head.

“Yea, thought not.” Mettaton shrugged.  
  
“I appreciate the thought! But I did mean as in, other activities.” Papyrus clarified. “Surely you have hobbies? Video games? Books? Perhaps knitting!”

Mettaton frowned, squinting as he thought. “I have uh..Animal Crossing? I’m not really sure where it is though. And some dating simulators, but those are all on my laptop. Which I’d prefer you not touch, no offense. That’s about it. I’m a bit too blind for books and tedious knotting, I’m afraid.”

Oh - right, Papyrus had forgotten Mettaton was pretty much legally blind. To be fair - he didn’t talk about it a lot, if ever, and coped with it so well you’d ever even guess it unless he told you. But still, there were other activities that didn’t require finely tuned sight! Mettaton must have other ways to have fun that weren’t television! But before he could protest further, the robot rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye and gave out a small moan.

“Listen, love, I’m sure you can find something to entertain yourself. Room service menu is on the table if you get hungry again. Good night, darling.”

Mettaton slipped through the doors, careful that they didn’t open too wide, probably so Papyrus couldn’t see inside. It didn’t matter either way, it seemed to be very dark in there. The door was left slightly ajar, presumably for Smirnoff to go in and out. And even then, all Papyrus could see from inside the room was pitch black.

Welp. Looks like he was on his own until bedtime. Papyrus went to bed at strictly 10pm every night to keep a good schedule.No earlier and no later! Which meant he had a few hours to kill, it was still somewhere around six’o’clock. This was going to be rather difficult, admittedly. Papyrus preferred to spend his time around other people, and usually at the very least he had Sans to talk to. Maybe he could call Sans? Actually, there was a high possibility Sans was asleep already. Unlike Papyrus, his brother’s bedtime tended to be “whenever I’m tired”, which happened to be always.

What to do, what to do...Well, first Papyrus tried to pay attention to the anime with the handsome men, which had still been playing in the background all this time. He truly did try to give it his full attention and get into it, wanting to show Mettaton he cared about his interests, but he found the whole thing very confusing and difficult to follow. During the time he had been watching it over lunch/dinner, he remembered the two main characters being a brunette man and his blond friend. But now those characters where nowhere to be found, replaced with four new main characters he didn’t recognize at all. Also, they were talking about tarot cards? Didn’t the plot have something to do with punching vampires before?

The more he tried to follow along, the more and more the contradictions were adding up and making him frustrated. He found it hard to enjoy himself due to it. He must’ve missed a lot of the plot, because he couldn’t even piece together what was going on through context clues. Oh, there was Dio! Wasn’t that the character Mettaton liked? ...No, yea, he was still very much lost on what was going on here. This must’ve been one of those shows you had to watch from the beginning to fully understand it, and Papyrus wasn’t even sure how far into the series this episode was. 

Papyrus decided to look for something else to watch, he was kind of curious to see what kind of DVDs Mettaton had. He had mentioned they were in a kitchen closet, yes?

...It just hit Papyrus how nonsensical the words “kitchen closet” were. Did Mettaton mean the pantry? Why was he keeping DVDs in his pantry? It’s not like he was lacking closet space by any means.

He got up and headed towards Mettaton’s kitchen. The whole place was rather dark at night. He guessed that during the daytime Mettaton just let the windows light the place up. There were a couple of night lights plugged in at various places, so the room wasn’t completely black. But it was still darker than Papyrus would’ve liked. He searched the walls a little bit until he found a light switch. There, that was better!

Papyrus took the time to look around the kitchen a little bit now that he had the chance to. He had never known pink marble countertops even existed, Mettaton was very dedicated to making as many things as he could pink. Above the kitchen island was a rack that, Papyrus remembered from seeing photographs of houses much nicer than his own, was meant to hold pots and pans. But it was completely barren. 

Tearing his gaze away from that, he tried to find where the pantry might be. He had guessed it was the accordion door in between the sink and the fridge. Opening it up, he found he was right! It was a fairly large space, big enough for Papyrus to walk into it a couple steps and not have to squeeze himself smaller to avoid knocking things down. Large as it was, though, much of it was also barren. All he found on the shelves were a few dust-coated wine bottles, a half empty box of instant noodles, and a couple boxes of cereal. That was to say; no DVDs. So..this hadn’t been what Mettaton meant after all.

Papyrus was careful with the door as he exited, worrying about slamming it too loud and waking up Mettaton. Not that you could really slam an accordion door, but there was no harm in being cautious.

Alright, now he had to think. Logically there was another closet in this kitchen somewhere. Now he just had to figure out exactly where that was. Another logically; the door had to be in the wall. So he would probably have more luck following along the wall. Very smart, Papyrus! Good detective work! 

As he looked for the mysterious closet, he couldn’t help but notice how it wasn’t just the pan rack and the pantry, but the whole room was very disturbingly empty. Even model houses had stock furniture, at least. But Mettaton had just plain nothing. Honestly it could pass off very easily for a model house, considering it didn’t look lived in at all. The living room had clutter and litter and gave evidence that someone was occupying this household. The energy that came with a house thoroughly lived in was not easily missed, but this room...this room didn’t have it at all. This whole space just felt eerie and wrong.

The door, right, Papyrus was looking for a door. Well he didn’t find any in the wall facing out to the kitchen, but he did find a small walkway that connected the kitchen area to the longer hallway that stretched from the back of the house all the way to the other door that led to Mettaton’s bedroom, by the front entrance. On one side of the walkway it was easy to see it was a bathroom, not a closet. Directly opposite of it though was another door. Papyrus opened it to find, yes, there was a closet here! Quite an odd place for a closet, especially considering he saw the doors to another closet just down the hallway.

Like all the other storage spaces Papyrus had encountered thus far, this closet was a walk in. This one was much smaller than his closet in the guest room, and bigger than the pantry. Papyrus reached up to find the light chain, and when it was turned on he found stashed inside it a specially tailored leather jacket and a large pink sweater. And, a black shelf with DvDs! Though it was extremely unorganized, and looked like everything had been stuffed on there haphazardly.

Papyrus had the urge to sort it out, it would give him something to pass the time with. And he couldn’t imagine Mettaton getting upset about such a thing. Before he went ahead and did that, Papyrus got down on his knees to see if anything actually stuck out to him. Let’s see...there were a lot of romance movies, a lot of things in black and white, and some Broadway shows and musicals. It as all the kind of stuff Papyrus had guessed Mettaton would be into, the large amount of horror flicks and slashers was a surprise though. Well it was a surprise until Papyrus reminded himself that Mettaton’s weapon of choice happened to be chainsaws.

None of these were really to his taste, though, unfortunately. He much preferred action movies, mysteries- cartoons! None of which he could find in Mettaton’s stash. Except another disc set of those Jojos and their wacky adventures, the cover of which featured a character that was neither in the cast of the two vampire punching men or the tarot card people. What was even going on in this show to have so many main characters…?

Papyrus sat it back down on the stack and got into a more comfortable sitting position, he had decided to sort through the shelf after all. At home the DVD shelf was sorted into alphabetical order, so he decided to do the same thing here. First he pulled everything off the shelf and put it on the floor, noticing now that it was empty that the wood was sagging from the weight of all of that. Hm...maybe furniture shopping was in Mettaton’s future. But it was what he had to work with right now, so he’d take it. 

As Papyrus sorted through his manageable piles, he found a few music CDs mixed in there. They were all Marina and the Diamonds, no surprise there. He decided to sit those on top of the shelf to return to Mettaton in the morning, he was probably missing them. Another oddity he found was that some of these CDs seemed to be extremely old, their cases damaged and the discs themselves having numerous scratches. Why did Mettaton have these? Those got sorted in normally, after he could decipher the title of the movie through the water-damaged label. He found a total of two tapes, as well. One seemed to be a bootlegged recording of Heathers on Broadway, the other simply had the word “debut” written in red ink across the label. Heathers got put in with the DVDs, the other one he...wasn’t quite sure what to do with. He decided to put it with the CDs. 

Those were really the only interesting things he found while sorting the collection. Once he was done, Papyrus sat back and admired his work. The shelf was still warped, but he liked to think that having the DVDs sorted like that took some stress off of it. Well, probably not, but that wasn’t going to stop him from thinking that. At least it was nicer to look at now, and easier to sort through. Papyrus’s knees popped as he got up off the ground, exiting the closet and going back into the kitchen. He decided to check the time on the stove.

7:10pm.

So...not exactly as much of a time waster as he was hoping it’d be. Papyrus sighed, looking around the kitchen to try and see if there was anything else he could do. Dishes was out of the question, the only thing Mettaton had in the sink was a coffee mug. Maybe he could take out the trash? If he remembered correctly, it was very full. Yes, that seemed productive and time wasting.

Papyrus didn’t have to search very hard for it, the kitchen light glinted off the overflowing candy wrappers and what was probably a concerning amount of glass bottles. He wasn’t sure what kind of glass bottles they were, and he kind of hoped that Mettaton was just very into old fashioned soda bottles. But the few that weren’t shattered to pieces he could make out labels that bore a certain white cat’s namesake.

Papyrus shook his head and made a tsktsk noise under his breath, smushing as much of it down as he could. Everything sounded louder at night. That included shards of glass being pushed around apparently, as the repeated clinking and clattering noise that broke the stagnant air made him flinch. He had decided to bring it to the front door, and after some thought decided that it would probably be best if he sat it outside the front door. Just in case Smirnoff suddenly decided he had a knack for dumpster diving. Sure, the cat was asleep with Mettaton right now, but that didn’t mean he might wake up later. The last thing Papyrus wanted to do was wake up to shards of glass scattered all around the house and likely a bleeding kitty. 

Papyrus propped the door open with his foot, dropping the bag just by the entrance. He’d probably ask Mettaton where it actually went in the morning. The outside foyer was even more eerie at night. It was nearly pitch black, out here Mettaton didn’t even have night lights set up. The only lights the place was granted came from the city outside. Papyrus looked around the room for a moment, just taking it in. The creepiness, that ever looming sense of wrongness. Oh! He had almost forgotten about that potted plant he was concerned about earlier. Maybe he should bring it in while he was thinking about it.

It was within his reach, but just barely. He wasn’t too keen on being locked out, he had left his phone upstairs and he didn’t know how heavy of a sleeper Mettaton was. Keeping his foot wedged in the door, Papyrus stretched out as far as he could, fingertips barely brushing the pot. He wiggled them to try and inch it closer, but ended up just pushing it away. Huffing, Papyrus got on his knees so he could stretch farther. This time he managed to catch it by the rim, giving out a little “aha!” as he dragged it closer to himself. He lifted it up to cradle it to his chest as he got back to his feet, kicking the door closed on his way back in and setting it on the floor inside. 

Only once he had double and then triple checked that both the lock and deadbolt were done up did Papyrus turn around to pick up the plant again. He was startled when he finally realized that he’d had an audience. It was sat on it’s haunches at the end of the hallway, the dim lighting of the chandelier glinted off jagged teeth, and colors danced across his white fur from the TV screen. Unnatural green eyes looked as if they were glowing in the darkness. 

Smirnoff was very spooky at night. He huffed and licked his teeth before getting to his paws again, slinking back into the darkness that was Mettaton’s room. The fact the door was bright pink and covered in Hello Kitty stickers kind of ruined the effect, though. 

Papyrus set his jaw and scratched the top of his head once Smirnoff was gone. Why was he so jumpy tonight? He guessed the loneliness was putting him on edge, or maybe the strangeness of the house he’d been noticing all day. Ah well, he’d just have to do something to wind down with later.

But first, he needed to continue on his little plant saviour quest. The skeleton picked up the pot again, hoisting it to his chest and looping back around to the kitchen. He placed it in the sink, running some water in it and then placing it in the center of the kitchen island. There! Looking better already, the dirt had been bone dry before-

Sans probably would’ve made a pun out of that somehow. 

But, that aside, he thought the plant would be much happier there! It’d get plenty of sunlight from the windows, and it was in a place where Mettaton would a) see it every day and b) not have to go very far to get it water. There was still hope for the little plant yet! He hoped that Mettaton would remember to water it now that it was in a more convenient place.

Papyrus checked the time on the oven, seeing how much time that little excursion had wasted.

7:20pm

….Really? He was hoping that would’ve wasted 20 minutes, at least. Maybe 15. 

Well, you did your best, Papy. He was going to just have to face it - there really was nothing to do around Mettaton’s house besides TV watching. How could someone live like that? That was probably a rude question to ask, otherwise he would’ve added it to his “to question Mettaton about” list in his head. Which was starting to get very long.

Regrettably, the fact of the matter was, for the first time in years, Papyrus was going to have to go to bed early.

* * *

It was 8:30 by time Papyrus was cleaned up and ready for bed, dressed in his pajamas and everything. He had intentionally dallied a bit just to try and stretch out the time period before he actually laid down. Still he was really trying to get as close to 10pm as possible. 

He sat down on the edge of his bed, picking up his phone for a moment to check his notifications. He’d left his phone on the nightstand while he was hanging out with Mettaton, not out of any sort of forgetfulness but because Mettaton was...weirdly sensitive. Papyrus had feared if he had paid attention to his phone very much while spending time with Mettaton, the robot would’ve gotten the wrong idea about not actually wanting to be there. That he rather be with Sans or Undyne right now instead of giving him company. The whole thought process sounded paranoid and crazy, but that really was how Mettaton’s brain worked. So, he’d just left it up here. Not like he really needed his phone on him 24/7 anyways, so it wasn’t really a huge loss.

After spending some time sorting through his notifications, many of which were from various puzzle game apps he had downloaded on his phone, he found he had 2 text messages. The first was from Sans, which simply said “have fun”. Papyrus replied quickly to that with “GOING TO BED, GOODNIGHT SANS!”. He doubted Sans was awake to see it, but it was the thought that counted. Usually he was there to say goodnight in person. 

The second was from Alphys.

Alphys  
Today @7:00pm  
Hey! Not sure if you’re busy, but I’m coming by tomorrow morning to bring Metta his meds. I already told him, just uh, didn’t want to surprise you.

Mettaton took medicine? More and more new information on his favorite robot! And, well the only robot he knew. But that didn’t take away the favorite status! He wondered what robots would need medicine for, or how robot medicine would be made. How would that work, he wondered? Was it a flashdrive Alphys plugged into his neck? Was he sick? Is that why he was acting so lethargic? So, so many questions...

PAPYRUS  
Today @8:45pm  
HELLO, ALPHYS! I AM SORRY FOR NOT RESPONDING EARLIER, I DID NOT HAVE MY PHONE ON ME. THANK YOU FOR INFORMING ME! I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU TOMORROW!

He wasn’t expecting a response anytime soon, but it was rude to leave someone on read. So he left it at that and set his phone back on the night stand, finally slipping under the covers of the bed. He wasn’t surprised that the sheets were very soft, and very pink. He knew Mettaton must’ve snuck pink into the room somewhere.

Today had been, he’d admit, a bit of a rough start. But, rough didn’t mean bad! Or at least that’s what he would keep saying to himself. This wasn’t even a full day yet, it was more like a day zero than a day one. There was still plenty of time in the week to spend with Mettaton, and maybe make him a little happier? Between the listlessness, not eating, and the fact he’d admitted to sleeping 3/4ths of the day, Papyrus got the vibe Mettaton wasn’t in the greatest of moods right now.

Something wasn’t right, he wasn’t sure what it was yet. But something wasn’t right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mettaton's cat is WIlfred Warrior and I really hope I insinuated that enough.
> 
> Also pwease don't get mad at me if my Jojos lore is wrong I haven't actually seen it in a long time.


	2. Day 1: Morning Routines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've decided to separate this story a bit more than I originally intended. Initially I was going to have 8 chapters, each one being it's own day, but then these started becoming much longer than I intended them. So instead of that, I'm gonna have probably 3 chapters for each day, maybe more depending on how many unique scenes I want to happen in one day.
> 
> But that just means more content, so, yay

Papyrus woke up bright and early the next day at 7am. Which was very early in terms of the day, especially compared to other people’s wake up hours. It gave him a very plenty 15 hours before he would need to go to bed again, but he was slightly upset at himself. For Papyrus, 7am was very late indeed. The Great Papyrus woke up no later than 4am sharp, he was very stubborn about not wasting daylight. And, yes, that included the kind of daylight that was present in the early, early mornings which was vaguely blue tinted and, to a sensible person, barely counted as daylight.

Papyrus swung his legs over the side of the bed, stretching his arms over his head. He heard his spine pop as he stretched. Oh dear, had he been that twisted up under the covers? He’d have to be more careful about that, joint pain was extra unpleasant for skeletons. After making his bed, Papyrus went about a standard morning routine. He brushed his teeth and went into the closet to pick out a change of clothes. His clothes for the day were a blue t-shirt and some comfy shorts, he hung his dirty pajamas over his forearm as he searched for somewhere to put them. There wasn’t a clothes hamper of any sort in the closet, so he checked around the bedroom a little bit. He couldn’t find anything out there either. Hm..did Mettaton not have any in his guest rooms? He’d have to ask him about that later once he saw him. For now, Papyrus poked his head outside the bedroom, remembering the clothes washer was out there. He found a laundry basket stacked on top of it that held only a tiny cat-sized dress and a pair of starry-patterned black leggings. Papyrus folded his pajamas neatly and put them inside the basket. He’d remove them later once he got his own, but he didn’t have a better place to put them right now. And he couldn’t just throw them on the floor, that was just barbaric. He’d look like a slob, in someone else’s home no less!”

Now that he was dressed and his dirty clothes were put in a temporary safe space, Papyrus continued down the stairs to make himself breakfast. He had remembered Mettaton at least having cereal in his pantry, so he hoped he wouldn’t have to order it from room service. Though, the more he thought about it; their breakfast menu must’ve been spectacular. And now that he thought more about it, he was in a mood for pancakes. But then the logical part of his brain took over, he wasn’t even sure if room service operated at these hours. He was going to play it on the safe side and assume not, unless Mettaton had 24hr service in the hotel. Which...wasn’t that unlikely, honestly. Hm, that would have to be something else to ask about. But, for today he decided he would just have cereal after all. Maybe he could order pancakes another day, maybe even tomorrow!

He wondered if Alphys had come by yet, he kind of hoped she hadn’t. He would’ve liked to say hello to her, even if her visit ended up being brief. The chances of that were rather slim, Alphys worked a late shift yesterday and on top of that, historically she wasn’t a morning person. Really,  _ really,  _ wasn’t a morning person. Papyrus had experience with that first hand! He recalled the time Alphys had spent the night at their house, she was still asleep on the couch when Papyrus had come downstairs to start on breakfast. And, trying to be friendly as well as a good host, he had made her a pot of coffee. He had intended to nudge her awake just enough to let her know it was there whenever she was ready to get up, and that was the day he learned Alphys was a Bearded Dragon! The way her neck turned black as she swooped around to bite his fingers off confirmed it!

To be fair to her, she apologized profusely once she was more coherent. Though she did warn she was a very jumpy person, and politely asked Papyrus to not wake her up like that ever again. Sans had a laughing fit over the fact Papyrus got bit by the most timid monster in the world.

So, the likelihood of Alphys being by was low. But maybe Mettaton was awake? It was hard to guess, Papyrus hadn’t ever heard anything about what the robot’s sleeping habits were. All he really knew was that Mettatoon liked to sleep with a stuffed animal...or...twenty. Mettaton may have had just a little bit of a problem when it came to collecting plushies, maybe just a smidge. He’d never admit it, of course, but it was both impressive and concerning how large his hoard was. Nobody knew where he was keeping them all, he bought new ones all the time and nobody could recall him ever giving any away. Papyrus had seen a few littered around the living room, and some smaller ones sitting on top of the fire place, but he knew that couldn’t have been Mettaton’s entire dragon’s hoard of stuffed animals.

As Papyrus finished coming down the stairs, he was pleasantly surprised to find Mettaton awake after all! Well, barely awake it seemed. His hair hadn’t been brushed in the slightest, and it looked like he wasn’t wearing any makeup yet. He was heavily leaning against his hand to force himself to stay upright, drifting in and out of being half asleep. His eyes would close and then flutter open momentarily, and then go right back to sleeping against his hand. The robot was curled up in a reciler with a breakfast tray perched precariously on either arm, all it held was a bowl of cereal, which Papyrus was glad to see he was actually eating this time! Even if he was taking his sweet time with it. The fact Mettaton had drowned the entire thing in pink glitter he was a bit less glad to see. However the fact the celebrity had some pretty - ahem -  _ interesting _ tastes was fairly well known. And, hey, either way, at least he was eating! Which was already a step up from yesterday!

Papyrus picked up his pace a little bit to plop himself down on the couch again. “Good morning, Mettaton! You’re up earlier than I thought you’d be!”

Mettaton grimaced and let out a long “shhhh” at the skeleton’s loud voice, “Quieter, please. I’m not awake yet, I’m just up to feed Smirnoff. He demands to be fed at this hour or else he won’t let me sleep.”

Just as he said that, the cat in question jumped up into the chair with a chirrup. Smirnoff wiggled himself into Mettaton’s lap, nudging his lip arms aside and making a circle in his lap before balling up into a loaf, tail curled around himself and squinting his eyes shut. He was purring.

Mettaton looked down at the loaf in his lap, pursing his lips. “Are you done?”

Being a cat, Smirnoff didn’t respond. 

He did take interest in Mettaton’s food though, stretching his neck out to sniff at the bowl on the tray. Mettaton made a noise somewhere between kissing and clicking, lifting the bowl into the air and away from him. “Nonono, not for kitties. This will make you sick.”

Mettaton sat the entire tray aside, scooping Smirnoff up like a baby and getting up from the chair. It didn’t take much time for him to find where Smirnoff had left his dish; still half full of food. “You are not! Baby, why do you have to be so difficult?”

He shifted Smirnoff into one arm so he could reach down and pick it up, bringing both it and the cat closer to his recliner and setting them down on the ground. Smirnoff sniffed at the bowl for a minute before resuming eating. With a long sigh, Mettaton collapsed backwards onto his chair, fingers rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“He’s - difficult in the morning.” Mettaton explained, for sure Papyrus must’ve thought he was a crazy person. “He’ll eat a little bit and then decide he’s bored with it and wander away, then he forgets about it. If I don’t chase him down to get him to eat it all he cries all day that I didn’t feed him.”

Case in point; after Mettaton had finished explaining that, Smirnoff had gotten bored again. He picked his head back up and licked his nose, skulking towards the staircase. Mettaton huffed, getting up and carrying the bowl over to him again.

“That is quite the ritual!” Papyrus said, watching Mettaton sit down on the floor next to Smirnoff’s new location. He didn’t think Mettaton was crazy or weird at all, he actually thought it was kind of endearing how Mettaton interacted with his cat. Mettaton really loved that thing a lot.

“It...certainly is one of the more interesting parts of my day,” Mettaton replied, petting Smirnoff’s back as he ate. Hoping that it would convince him to stay in one place this time.

“Is it alright if I make myself a bowl of cereal?” Papyrus asked, assuming the answer was yes, but he didn’t want to be rude by just helping himself to Mettaton’s food without saying anything.

“Oh, of course, darling! Please, help yourself!” Mettaton replied, and yipped when Smirnoff turned around to bite his hand. He didn’t want to be pet anymore - and there he went again...

“Thank you!” Papyrus got up off the couch and went into the kitchen, remembering where the pantry was from his little late night adventure. He hadn’t expected it too hard the night prior, but he now saw that the only kind of cereal Mettaton stocked was the brightly colored and grossly sugar laden variety. Which felt about par for the course. But, that happened to be the kind Papyrus preferred too! Look at that, already finding something in common with the celebrity!

Papyrus next had to search to find a bowl, which took him a bit longer. The cabinets weren’t something he had touched last night, so he wasn’t sure which cabinets held what. One of them seemed to just be filled with craft supplies; glitter, glue, sequins. Why was that in the kitchen…? Another just was stuffed with multiple bags of sugar. Aha! There we go. All of Mettaton’s dishes were pink with pretty little gold patterns, which was hardly a surprise. They also looked barely used, which was also not surprising. At home, no matter how hard Papyrus had tried to keep the cupboard in some semblance of order it always ended up decaying into chaos after a week at max. Mettaton’s cabinets, on the other hand, were perfectly straight and organized. And Papyrus knew that Mettaton was not the most organized of people.

He pulled down a pink porcelain bowl and opened up the fridge to find the next step of cereal making. Papyrus wasn’t sure why he kept being surprised when he found something in the kitchen mostly empty, he guessed the cabinets being full had gotten his hopes up. The only things the fridge contained was a mostly empty gallon of milk, a container of strawberries, and a cake stand made of frosted pink glass. Contained in the cake stand was a New York Style cheesecake, it was mostly gone. It had bits of sliced strawberries and, what Papyrus assumed to be, a strawberry syrup drizzled on it. It looked very good! He wondered if Mettaton had made the cake himself. Papyrus picked up the box of strawberries to inspect them; they were mostly molded. He frowned, deciding to do Mettaton a favor and toss them out.

Papyrus shut the door to the fridge after he’d finished with it, picking up his completed bowl and starting to head to the dining room when he was stopped in his tracks by Mettaton coming out from around the corner. He was holding that pink sweater Papyrus had seen in the closet last night, and pulled it over his head as he walked. Now that it was daylight, Papyrus could make out some more details about it. It was a turtleneck made of thick yarn, possibly hand-knitted. It looked like it was more than a bit old, it was fraying and worn, the color slightly faded, some obvious signs where it’d been stretched, and a couple of small holes between some of the stitches. 

Also, now that it was being worn and not just hanging up, it looked like it was meant to be for someone three times Mettaton’s size. Which Papyrus had to imagine would’ve been a very intimidating individual, considering Mettaton was not a small man at 7ft tall. It was incredibly baggy and without the hem rolled up, ended at his knees. Mettaton had to roll up that and a little bit of the sleeves to not drown in it, and even still had to extend his arms at slightly past their regular length to be able to use his hands. The turtleneck collar he didn’t care as much about, all he did was loosely pull it down so it rested under his chin. It still pooled out over his shoulders and flopped on his chest a bit, but he just let it do it’s own thing. Even if it’s “own thing” happened to be smothering him.

Mettaton took a seat at one of the barstools at the kitchen island, folding his hands under his chin and giving Papyrus a small grin. “I thought I’d join you.”

Papyrus nodded, pulling up one of the stools from around the other side of the island for himself and sitting down.

“Are you that cold?” Papyrus decided to ask, remembering how Mettaton had bundled up just as tightly in blankets yesterday on the couch. “Is your temperature system malfunctioning?”

“No, it’s fine, it’s just been getting chilly. Haven’t you noticed?” Mettaton frowned lightly, putting more of his weight into his hands. “I heard on the news it’s supposed to get down to 40 this week. I suppose it is that time of the year…”

“40 degrees? That isn’t that cold.” Papyrus was the opposite of Mettaton, being very careful not to put his elbows on the table as the robot was practically splaying himself out on the narrow surface. His dad had always told him elbows on the table was bad manners.

“Not that cold?” Mettaton seemed appalled Papyrus even floated the notion. “Papy, that’s freezing!”

“Freezing temperature is actually 32 degrees!” Papyrus said helpfully, “Which, I also personally consider to be not very cold. But that’s just me!”

Mettaton frowned, switching to leaning into just one hand and letting the other rest on the table. The sleeve of his sweater slid down to the bend of his arm, not having any sort of proper grip to keep it upright. 

“Oh, that’s right. You grew up in Snowdin, yes? I guess you’d be used to worse.” He tapped his finger against his cheek, “What would you say is cold, then? I’m curious.”

Papyrus had to think about that for a minute, chewing his food thoughtfully. “One time the temperature in Snowdin got down to negative twenty! It was so cold, Sans came back from watch with icicles between his ribs! So I guess that’s what I would consider cold, but then again I am not very temperature sensitive.”

“Goodness,” Mettaton put a hand to his chest. “That doesn’t sound very pleasant. See, in Hotland it never really got below the hundreds. So, I guess I’m just a bit of a baby about the cold.”

Papyrus tilted his head, “Didn’t you grow up in Waterfall, though?”

“I did!” Mettaton said, finally busying himself with fixing his sleeves again. “But, you have to remember, ghosts have no sense of touch. I couldn’t feel temperature back then, and I never really spent much time there after getting the body. Alphys only really dragged me along to meet Undyne the one time, after that I kind of went out of my way to avoid the place.”

He paused, pursing his lips. “Say, you’ve been to Waterfall a few times, haven’t you?”

Papyrus nodded enthusiastically, “I have! I met Undyne more than once, all the time, actually!”

Mettaton giggled a little bit at that, “What’d it feel like? Temperature-wise, I mean?” 

“Humid, very humid. But not muggy, it was kind of a cool humidity.” Papyrus said, rubbing his chin as he tried to think of a proper way to describe it. “It was kind of like - standing next to the beach in the winter time! But less salty. Have you ever done that?”

“Hm...a few times. I don’t go down to the beach all too often.” Mettaton reeled in his arms a bit, giving himself sweater paws. “That’s...that’s a bit silly, isn’t it? This property cost me a couple million dollars, just because of the beach, and I never even use it. I don’t like the beach very much, honestly. The sand gets in my seams and I’ve heard some stories about what salt water does to metal.”

“I go to the beach all the time!” Papyrus replied, “It’s Alphys and Undyne’s favorite spot, they invite us sometimes!” 

“That checks out,” Mettaton huffed. “Alphys would always insist I come with when I still lived with them, and if I said no Undyne would pick me up and put me in the car. I haven’t been since leaving their house.”

Another pause, he didn’t seem to want to talk about that very much. “Anyways...getting back on topic. I never actually went to Snowdin a lot. My body is fully equipped for cooling me down but not so much the opposite. A heating system isn’t really something you think about when you live in a literal lava pit, you know?”

“Makes sense!” Papyrus nodded, and then gestured at Mettaton’s chest. “So is that what the sweater is for? It looks like you’ve had it for quite some time!”

“Mostly,” Mettaton answered, folding his arms and sinking down to put his chin down in the middle of his little nest. “It keeps me warm, of course. But also it’s soft and I like how big it is, it’s my favorite sweater. Asgore gave it to me a long time ago, there’s a fun fact for you.”

Oh! That explained the largeness, and erased the image of the hulking, scary individual wearing a bright pink sweater that Papyrus had cooked up in his mind. “Asgore?! Wowie! How did that happen?”

“It’s...it’s not that exciting of a story, really.” Mettaton admitted. “It just goes he was getting rid of it, and knew I liked pink. Between living at the lab and the resort being so close to New Home, I actually saw him quite often.”

“That was very kind of him!” Papyrus was quite enthralled with the story, mundane or not. He found it rather fascinating and very sweet Asgore had thought of him like that!

“Mmhm!” Mettaton agreed, and then seemed more thoughtful. “Though...sometimes I wonder. Have you ever heard of the sweater curse?”

Papyrus shook his head, “I have not! What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just an old wive’s tale.” Mettaton explained, “It says if a knitter gives their significant other a sweater, their relationship is doomed to fail. But...I’m not sure if Toriel knits. She just seems like that kind of person.”

“I am...unsure.” Papyrus responded, he saw Toriel quite often, but he couldn’t recall if she’d ever talked about knitting.

“Hm..well, I guess we’ll never know.” Mettaton shrugged. “It’s gotten a bit ratty, though, and I’m afraid I stretched out the collar with BETA…” He tugged at the loose collar and frowned at it. It was so bunched and folded up, Papyrus barely even noticed if it was loose or not. Either way it buried Mettaton’s neck and covered up a part of his face. “I mean, I guess I only ever wear it around the house, so it’s fine.”

Mettaton let go of his collar, snuggling back down into his arm nest and purring, closing his eyes. “I kind of wish I had it when I was in the hospital.” He huffed, “Though, honestly, knowing how they operate they probably would’ve decided it’s contraband. ‘Oh you’re going to strangle yourself with it! Soft fabric is so deadly, don’t you know!!’ Ugh...the things they decide are banned in there, absolutely ridiculous.”

Papyrus stopped dead, his jaw dropped and he looked down at Mettaton with bugged out eyes. It took him a minute, but Mettaton realized that his companion had gone silent, and had the sense he was being stared at. Even in his state of being half-asleep and cuddled into way too much fabric with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes back up, and very cautiously pushed himself to sit up straight, like if he moved too fast he was going to get pounced on.

Papyrus locked eyes with him as he sat back up.

Mettaton stared back.

Papyrus continued that overly shocked expression.

And Mettaton became increasingly uncomfortable, chewing lightly on his lip.

Finally he was the one to break the stare off, “U-uhm, oh dear. Did-did I say something wr-”

_**“WHEN WERE YOU IN THE HOSPITAL?!”** _

Mettaton squeaked, jolting so hard the barstool tipped backwards and sent him to the floor. Somewhere from upstairs was the sound of a frantic bell and the rapid pattering of a cat running for the hills. The sound was barely heard over the loud crash that came from Mettaton’s heavy body slammed to the hardwood floor. Mettaton was now the one with the shocked expression, pulling himself up to his knees by grabbing onto the edge of the kitchen island, hoisting himself up just enough to put his chin on the edge and huff.

“O-oh goodness.”

Before he could do anything else, Papyrus shot up from his seat and zipped around to the other side of the table. He scooped Mettaton up under the arms and lifted him up, the robot gave out another uncharacteristic squeak, but otherwise just kind of...let it happen? Mettaton was placed down on another chair, and Papyrus reached down to set the other barstool upright. Then he went back around the table, and sat down in his original spot. This whole transaction took a grand total of two minutes, but it took Mettaton even longer to process what had just happened. Solely due to the fact Papyrus had picked him up, and it wasn’t because he was shy or he was uncomfortable with being touched or grabbed like that. It was because he weighed  _ 800 pounds _ and Papyrus had scooped him up like he was a newborn kitten. The only person who was capable of carrying him like that was Undyne.

He decided to not think about it too hard, and turned back in Papyrus’s direction, only to see the skeleton leaning very, very close to him. Practically touching noses. The robot made a noise sounding like a ‘meep’, retreating into his sweater like a very sparkly turtle.

“When did that happen?! Why did that happen?! Are you hurt, are you sick? OH my god!! I would’ve visited if you told me! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone else tell me!” Papyrus shouted out at about a mile a minute, frantically waving his hands around as he talked. Mettaton tried to follow his movements, but quickly got a headache from trying to move his eye around that fast.

“Papy - Papy stop.” If Mettaton hadn’t been awake before, he was now, reaching out and taking Papyrus’s hands in his own, lowering them to the table and cupping his own hands over them. “Papy, p-please calm down.”   
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just!!” Papyrus pulled his hands away, standing up from his chair and pacing around the kitchen in circles so he could get his energy out another way. “Is-is that where you’ve been?! You were in a hospital! That's- that’s a very big deal!! I can’t believe I wasn’t aware! I failed you in a time of need!”

Papyrus was so caught up in a tizzy, he didn’t seem to realize something; and when he did, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. 

“Wait a moment…” Papyrus lowered his hands, turning to Mettaton with a puzzled look. “Hospitals don’t...fix robots.”

Mettaton’s face flushed, tugging his collar up to obscure everything but his visible eye. Which looked away at a very interesting spot on the floor. “Uhm..well...not.. _ that  _ kind of hospital.”

Papyrus frowned, that didn’t make much sense to him. Were there other kinds of hospitals? There was the kind for hurt people, and that’s about all he knew of. He guessed there was also the kind of hospital that...was….for…...

“Mettaton,” Papyrus lowered his voice, “Were you in-”

_ Dingdong! _

“Oh!! I should probably go get that!!” Mettaton was all too quick to use that as an out for this conversation. He got to his feet and ran to the door so fast Papyrus half expected a Mettaton-shaped dust cloud in his wake.

Papyrus followed into the living room to see who it was, but before he even got there he heard Mettaton cry out “Alphie!”, followed by a muffled grunt. He looked to discover Alphys with her face stuffed into Mettaton’s chest, his arms wrapped around her and himself multiple times and cheek pressed against her head, doing a little spin.

The poor lizard woman wiggled weakly as she tried to free herself, “M-Mettaton- y-you’re crushing - m-me-”

“Oh!” Mettaton stopped suddenly, arms zipping back into himself as soon as she protested. Alphys yelled as she fell from the air onto her rear. Mettaton gave a concerned pout, putting a finger to his lips as she picked herself up, rubbing the base of her tail.

“O-ow…” She muttered, wiggling her tail to make sure it still worked. She hunched over to pick up something she’d dropped, “W-well, good t-to see you in s-such a good mood.”

Papyrus could’ve sworn she was standing just a bit straighter after being squeezed like that.

“I’m just happy to see you, is all~!” Mettaton chimed in a way-too-chipper tone of voice, reaching over to shut and lock the door.”

“Uh-huh...and that’s it?” Alphys questioned, turning to face him with a raised brow, not believing it for a second. Mettaton gave her a guilty grin, and she just sighed and shook her head.

“Hello, Alphys!” Papyrus greeted, waving towards her.

“Oh, u-uh, hi Pap.” She said in return, giving him a polite small smile. She finished picking up her belongings and waddled towards the dining room. She had a white paper bag clutched in her paws and a regular plastic shopping bag looped on the crook of her arm.

Mettaton beat her to it, perching himself in a chair and folding his hands on the table. He hooked his stilettos into the footrest of the chair and bounced his leg impatiently. In contrast, Alphys had a bit of trouble getting up on the chair directly next to him. Why he insisted on these big tall-legged chairs, she’d probably never know. It’s not like he needed the height boost. They were a hassle for her to get up on, always taking her a good few minutes to drag herself up. She had to stretch her arms out and hook her hands onto the opposite side of the seat, flailing her legs as she struggled to pull her entire body weight up. And to make matters worse, Mettaton never helped, just smiled at her patiently as he waited for her to get comfy.

She huffed when she finally got up, sitting back on her haunches and pulling her tail up over her feet. She sat her bags down on the table, pushing the paper one aside for now. She took the plastic one first, opening it up and putting her face into it as she looked for something.

“S-so, first, I-I got you a g-gift.” Alphys pulled her face out, producing from the bag a little plastic box with a cupcake in it, it looked to be red velvet.

Mettaton gasped melodramatically, pupil turning into a little star and squishing his hands to his cheeks. “For me?! Alphie, you shouldn’t have!” he reached out towards her again, Alphys leaning back with a squeak.

“Oh nononono- METTA- AUGH-” Her protests went ignored, and she was pulled into another back breaking hug (or maybe back fixing? Papyrus was sure he heard her back pop.) This time Mettaton purred as he rubbed his face against her head.

Papyrus decided to join them at the dining room table after retrieving his abandoned cereal bowl from the other room. Alphys had managed to bap Mettaton away at that point, having gone back to sorting through her bags. She picked up the paper one this time, pulling multiple orange pill bottles out of it as she talked.

“S-so, they refilled your Ad-Adderall.” Alphys said, crumpling up the paper bag and tossing it aside.

Papyrus could see where Mettaton had gotten the bad habit from, he huffed at the carelessness, but didn’t speak up about it. She folded her paws together and cleared her throat, starting to look a bit nervous.

“And, and then they, u-uhm...Added o-on all th-the new st-stuff…” She was clicking her claws together again, the tell-tale sign she was anxious.

Mettaton didn’t take notice, just nodded along happily as he picked apart the cupcake with his fingers. Happily preoccupied with eating it, which was good, it had been Alphys’s intention. She wasn’t lying when she said the cupcake was meant as a gift, but there was just the slightest ulterior motive. Maybe Mettaton would be too distracted by the sweet to get upset about what she was about to say.

“S-so uhm, you’re taking uh…” She was stammering too much to get it out, she gulped and broke out in a nervous grin. “T-ten...ten different pills now?”

Mettaton hacked loudly as he choked on his food, Alphys covering her face with her hands and letting out a quiet “o-oh no…”, knowing her plan had failed. Mettaton sputtered, pushing the cupcake away from himself and staring at Alphys with wide eyes.

“T-ten, ten - ten pills?!?! Excuse me?!” 

Alphys kept avoiding looking at him, “I-I’m surprised too.” She busied her hands with sorting the bottles on the table by height, just to give her an excuse for not looking at Mettaton as he was slowly starting to panic.

“I-I guess th-that- that uhm, y-you don’t need to worry about dr-drug interactions w-with robots? H-ha..” Alphys was trying to joke, but it didn’t soothe Mettaton in the slightest. “U-Uhm, I-I mean I take t-three-”

“Oh that’s just fantastic.” Mettaton snapped, digging his claws into the crook of his arm and glaring down at the table. “I’m taking more pills than a nervous trainwreck, that’s just great. God, I’m screwed.”

Alphys frowned, turning to face him with furrowed brows. The insult didn’t get to her, she wasn’t upset, she just seemed disappointed. “H-hey, that was r-really mean, Mettaton.”

Mettaton deflated, unhooking his fingers from his arm and sinking down to put his head on the table. “It...that was, wasn’t it? I-I’m sorry, love, you know I don’t mean it.” He reached out and dragged his cupcake closer to himself again, picking out a piece of pure frosting to pop in his mouth.   


“I-I know you don’t,” Alphys nodded, “T-thank you for apologizing.”

Meanwhile, Papyrus was just happy to be included! Even if he probably shouldn’t have been included! This seemed like private medical information that should've stuck between professionals and family members, and yet here he was! He didn’t really know about medication, especially prescription pills. The whole concept of psychiatric medications was a rather new idea to monsterkind. There hadn’t been any therapists in the Underground, who’d’ve guessed! Papyrus at least knew what they were for, considering Sans had to take medicine. But he only took one pill, not three or...ten as Mettaton was reportedly taking.

Papyrus didn’t butt into the conversation, at least not yet, mostly because he didn’t really know if there was anything he could say to make it better. To be honest he didn’t understand why Mettaton was so distraught in the first place. Medicine was supposed to help, wasn’t it? So him taking that meant just mean’t he’d be getting a lot of help! ...Right? Is that how that worked?

Alphys was still trying to console Mettaton, who now was sitting with his face pressed against the table and his hands looked behind his head. She rubbed one hand on his back, stuttering gibberish as she tried to find something of worth to say. Alphys wasn’t good at this either, who’d'a thunk!

“It-it-it’s not, th-so bad!” She finally said, still stumbling over her words. “I-I mean, f-for one thing, y-you aren’t taking them all at-at once!”

“So I just have to force a fistful of pills down my throat ten times a day?” Mettaton grumbled, “Oh that’s  _ so _ much better. Thank you  _ so very  _ much, darling dear, I really appreciate the pep talk.”

“Th-that’s, n-not how math works…” Alphys said, scrunching up her face in confusion, “Y-you’re taking it th-three times a day, and-and uh, I-I think th-the most at one time is f-five? I’d have to d-double check.”

Mettaton groaned again, “Oh, at most five, she says! Oh yes that’s great, that’s so much better!”

Alphys frowned, lost on what to do. Mettaton wasn’t going to accept her help, so she just went back to taking things out of bags. 

“I-I mean, really, Metta, it-it’s really n-not that bad.” She continued, producing a farther large rainbow colored pill sorter from the bag. She showed it to Mettaton like she might a new DVD set of some magical girl anime, tapping one claw against it’s face and grinning. “L-look, I-I found a cute sorter for you! If-if it makes you feel any better! An-and I saw a-a-a a sm-smaller portable one online sh-shaped like a kitty! I-I can get it for you wh-whenever you’re ready to go back to work!”

“It doesn’t, but I appreciate the thought.” Mettaton grumbled, pushing his head back up off the table. He snatched up one of the bottles, squinting at the label. “What are all these even for? Am I that sick in the head?”

Alphys reaches out to gently pry the bottle out of his hand, adjusting her glasses as she read the label over. “O-oh! I-I take this one t-too, actually. I-it’s for, uh-uhm,” she lowered the bottle back down, “An-anxiety.”

“ _ ANXIETY? _ ” Mettaton near squealed, his voice coming out at least two octaves higher than usual. Alphys flinched backwards, covering her ear. “Me?! Anxiety?! Alphys, honey, darling, angel, light of my life, my moon and stars, I-you - you know that must be wrong! I-I don’t have anxiety! That’s! That’s just nonsensical! Me, anxiety, oh my god.”

“M-Metta,” Alphys put the bottle back down, steepling her fingers together. “Y-you called me at th-three in the morning one night b-because you were having a panic attack o-over Bojack Horseman.”

“And?!” Somehow his voice got even higher as he continued to protest, “That doesn’t prove anything! It-it’s a show about a depressed celebrity with- with issues! How-how am I supposed to see that kind of stuff and not get panicky about it? Me of all people?”

Mettaton had begun digging at his hair, turning his head to gnaw at the sleeve of his sweater. Papyrus hadn’t noticed before, but a lot of the fraying and small holes accumulated at the cuffs. He wondered if Mettaton chewed the sleeves a lot. Also! Papyrus finally thought of a way to contribute to the conversation!

“You are rather high strung.” Papyrus pointed out, thinking pointing out more reasons why a diagnosis of anxiety made sense would help Mettaton accept it.

Mettaton jumped a little bit, like he’d forgotten Papyrus was even there. He pulled his mouth off his sleeve momentarily, staring at Papyrus with wide eyes.

“I...I am?” Mettaton’s voice came out very hurt and small, sounding like he’d just been told his cat died. 

Alphys could sense this was spiraling fast, trying to keep herself from getting panicky as well. “I-I mean it’s a-actually pretty common in-in p-people with uh-uhm,” she looked over at Papyrus, seeming to contemplate something for a minute. Whatever it was, she decided to keep it to herself and looked back towards Mettaton. “I-in people with y-your diagnosis. I-I’ve actually been r-reading up on it a li-little bit. An-anxiety is a comorbidity in-in ab-about half of all ca-cases. N-nothing you’re experiencing is-is...atypical…”

Mettaton didn’t respond, he’d gone back to chewing on his sleeve. He looked catatonic, staring at the table with wide, glassy eyes, glancing this way and that, his vents kicking up to full blast out of nowhere. 

Alphys reached out to touch his arm, “M-Metta? C-come on, don’t cry. C-come on.”

Too late. As soon as she had said that, Mettaton burst out sobbing. Alphys flinched, giving another “o-o-oh no..” under her breath, watching as Mettaton pulled his legs up onto the chair, hugging his knees to his chest. She sucked in a breath, taking one of his hands and pulling it closer to herself. SHe rubbed the pad of her thumb across it in a small, slow circle.

“H-h-hey, c-come on. It’s-it’s alright. You’re al-alright, it-it’s nothing bad.” She tried to comfort him in a low, soothing voice as the robot continued to hiccup and sob, biting down hard on his sleeve. At this point he was probably chewing more of his arm than his sweater.

Alphys took notice of that, and she wasn’t very happy about it. She looked over at Papyrus, who, yes, was still here, despite the way this whole situation had gone downhill, and how unsure he was about this all. He kept unclenching and clenching his hand, looking between the crying robot and the lizard lady trying to get him to stop, and then somewhere to the side of him as if he’d find some solution to the problem sitting in the chair next to him.

“Uh-uhm, h-hey Pap?” Alphys peeped up, trying to catch his attention. And, caught his attention, she did! Rather quickly, in fact, snapping his head in her direction so fast she heard his neck joint click. Ouch - that sounded...painful. Nevermind, that wasn’t the issue at hand. “C-could you uhm - d-do me a favor?”

Papyrus was both thrilled and relieved that Alphys had called upon him for help. He really had no clue what to do here, but he felt bad just leaving Mettaton in this state while he just sat dumbfounded at the sidelines. So, of course, he was happy to carry out a favor!

Which he confirmed with a nod, “Yes, of course! Anything at all!”

“O-okay, so, uh. I-I need you to go in-into his bedroom. Uhm, y-you know where that is?” She started, her fingers twitching as she tried to keep her thoughts straight.

Papyrus nodded. “Yes! Downstairs, by the fireplace.”

“T-that’s the one. O-okay good. U-uh, s-so you need to g-go in his room, and bring m-me the fluffiest plushie you c-can find, and - uh - n-not one of those b-big giant ones. G-got it?” She looked over at Mettaton again, reaching up and muttering as she pulled his hand away from his mouth. “H-heyhey, not your fingers…”

Papyrus shot up from his chair, slamming his palms onto the table and nodding once in affirmation. “I am on it!”

As Papyrus rushed to complete his mission, it had just occurred to him this would be the first time he’d be seeing the inside of Mettaton’s room. The double doors were still slightly open, but that seemed to be the norm. Again, Papyrus had to assume it was so the cat could go in and out as he pleased.

In fact, the first thing Papyrus noticed upon entering was said cat. Smirnoff was laying on top of a pink cat tower that was placed right next to the door, lifting his head up and twitching his tail angrily at the intruder. There was a pillow placed on the topmost perch, and some makeshift cat fishers made of tying sparkly pink yarn around various small items dangling from it. He also noticed a pair of panties thrown haphazardly on one of the other perches of the shelf...which, he assumed wasn’t for the cat’s enjoyment. This was the cleanest thing in the entire room.

Papyrus had always known Mettaton wasn’t the most organized of people, but dear lord. This room could be legally classed as a disaster zone. The outer wall was presumably lined with windows in a similar fashion to the living room, but black out curtains were covering the entire expanse of it. From the thin layer of dust, Papyrus had to assume they hadn’t been opened up in quite some time. There was very little furniture in the room besides the cat town. There was a canopy bed, a vanity, some floating shelves stuffed full of plushies, a TV sat on the floor, and a bearskin rug that had probably at some point been white, but it was stained with spilled makeup, paint, and...other things. Papyrus couldn’t quite tell, he did notice though that the head of the bear had on makeup and false eyelashes.

The floor was covered in a little bit of everything, from dirty dishes, empty drink containers, clothes, cat toys, Mettaton’s toys, spilled glitter, open makeup containers, and much more. You name it, it was probably on Mettaton’s floor. Papyrus had to watch where he stepped as he made his way over to the bed. He caught a glimpse of Mettaton’s closet, which he had to assume was a walk-in based on his experience thus far. Even with the presumed large amount of space, it was overflowing. Propped open by a pile of clothes that probably stacked as high as Papyrus’s knees, and even more clothes thrown over the door, obscuring the mirror that was on the inside of it. Some of the clothes on the ground were on hangers, or still wrapped up in dry cleaning plastic. But the majority were just crumbled up and thrown on the pile. The room was lit dimly by some fairy lights and a lamp on the nightstand, there wasn’t any overhead lights. The string of fairly lights blinked in and out, strung around the length of the room as well as around the top of Mettaton’s bed canopy.

Speaking of the bed, as Papyrus got closer to it, he saw it was a war zone of it’s own. Papyrus had quickly figured out that’s probably where he’d find the largest selection of plushies to choose from without having to search around on the floor. He assumed the ones on shelves were special and not meant to be messed with. The bed was unmade, and probably hadn’t been made in a while. It didn’t have a bottom sheet protecting the mattress, and the top sheet had been kicked off the end of the bed, leaving only a comforter, two pillows covered in cat hair, and some quilted thing that was half fallen to the floor. Most the bed was taken up by a ginormous pile of stuffed animals, so large the mattress was starting to slide off it’s frame due to some of them slipping into the crack between the wall and the bed.

_ Do you really live like this…?  _ Papyrus thought as he took it all in, giving the whole thing a concerned look. There was little time to ponder on it too long for now, though, as he still had a task at hand. Maybe cleaning Mettaton’s room could be something to do later this week.

He started sorting through the pile of stuffed animals, repeating the specifications Alphys had given to him in his head. Long fur, not too big, long fur, not too big...

Aha! Papyrus emerged from the pile with a grey and white cat that had a little blue bow around it’s neck. It’s long pile fur seemed sufficient, and it wasn’t much bigger than the average teddy bear. Also, it was a cat! Which was Mettaton’s favorite animal! So he hoped that would also help! He tucked it away under his arm, marching out of the room triumphantly and pulled the door back closed behind him. Smirnoff glared at him from his perch on the way out, going back to licking his paws once he was left in peace again.

Papyrus found Mettaton still crying, and Alphys still trying to calm him down. She was holding both his hands in her own, making shushing noises and rubbing the back of his palms. He’d switched to gnawing on his collar instead of trying to bite his arms, or his hands, which was at least a step up from where he’d been at before.

Papyrus jogged over to them, holding up the little grey cat victoriously. “I have found your plushie!”

Alphys let go of Mettaton’s hands for a moment to take it from him, “T-thanks, Pap.”

She then immediately shoved it against Mettaton’s chest, which startled him out of crying for just a moment. He instinctively held it, staring at it like he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“P-pet it,” Alphys instructed, low but firm, “O-or hug it, chew on it, wh-whatever you need to do. J-just call down, okay? What w-we aren’t going to do is bite ourselves.”

Mettaton nodded, looping his arms around the cat and putting his chin on it’s head. It didn’t take him very long to start chewing on it’s ear, still sniffling and hiccuping, but the distraction had calmed him down some. It gave him something to focus on that wasn’t his spiraling thoughts. 

Papyrus took his seat again, happy to have helped. He’d have to brainstorm other ways to make Mettaton feel better as the day dragged on, he really didn’t like seeing him like this.

Now that that situation was more or less dealt with, Alphys went back to the bottles of pills. She counted them to make sure none had gotten knocked to the floor, thankful there wasn’t any missing, and pushed them together. She also decided to take the time to close the box up of the half-finished cupcake. He’d probably want to eat it later, when he wasn’t having a panic attack over being told...he has a disorder...that causes panic attacks.

_ Make it make sense _ , Alphys thought to herself, even with all the stuff she’d been told by the doctors and in her own research, she still didn’t understand how Mettaton’s thought process worked.

“N-now do you see why you n-need the pills?” She said, trying to come out like she was scolding him, but it was very hard for her to sound intimidating. “Y-you can’t keep f-freaking out like this, Metta. It-it’s not healthy.”

Mettaton avoided looking at her, still preoccupied with chewing on the ear of his toy. “I hh..hate this..” He finally said, tangling his fingers up in it’s fur.

“I...I know you do…” Alphys sighed, rubbing her face. “L-lets...let’s talk about this l-later, okay? I-I can’t st-stay all morning.”

Mettaton nodded, finally taking his mouth off the plushie’s ear and setting his chin on top of it’s head instead. Which was a good thing, it meant he was winding down. He quietly watched as Alphys started sorting the pills into the container, the repetitive movements helped him calm down further. She was very deft with her hands, skimming labels quickly, popping the lids, pouring some into her hand and separating them into the correct slots before moving onto the next one. If one didn’t know any better, they might say she was a pharmacist for a living. But she’d done her dabbling in biology and medical science, there were living results that she was better suited to sticking to robotics.

“You’re very good at that.” Papyrus said, who had also been watching her this whole time. He still wanted to be included in the conversation somehow, even if the actual talking had died down.

“I-I’m used to doing this k-kind of stuff,” Alphys said, not looking up from her work. She puffed out her cheeks and ducked back into the plastic bag for a second, pulling out an identical pill sorter to fill up next. “W-when I was uhm..the uhm...The - uh - y..you know.” She stopped, deciding to end that train of thought with a shake of her head. Not that it was going anywhere in the first place. “N-nevermind, I d-don’t really want to talk a-about it. J-just, I’m used to it.”

While he was curious about where she had been about to go with that, Papyrus didn’t press. Mettaton didn’t either, likely because he knew what she was going to say. Papyrus wanted to assume her explanation was going to be rather mundane, but he would’ve liked to hear it anyways! He liked any kind of stories, no matter how unexciting. Clearly the doctor didn’t want to be asked about it though. Besides, she was still busy.

Speaking of Mettaton, the robot had calmed down a considerable amount since Papyrus had come to save the day. It was lucky he hadn’t yet put his makeup on today, otherwise it would’ve probably been running down his face in ugly black streaks right now. Instead the only thing that coated his face was the sparkly tears sticking to the blades of his facial vents, which had also stopped stuttering in overdrive. Papyrus never realized how powerful simply being given a distraction could be. Mettaton had gone from chewing up his shirt and arms to idly petting the stuffed cat’s fur. His claws were stretched out of their sheaths, twirling around the locks of fake fur. Ah! So that’s why Alphys had specified fluffy, it all made sense now.

The silence that fell over the three wasn’t awkward, it was kind of a nice change of pace in comparison to the earlier chaos. The air was filled with the sounds of plastic clicking, and silverware hitting ceramic as Papyrus finished off his food. His cereal had gone soggy at that point, but he didn’t want to waste it. He enjoyed the taste regardless, it was mostly just sugary milk now. Soon enough Alphys had finished sorting pills into both the containers she’d brought, pushing them aside and bagging up the remaining bottles to put away later.

“A-Alright, so uhm-” Alphys turned back to face Mettaton, forcing him to look away from her hands and up at her face. “T-that should m-make you good for t-two weeks. I-I’ll sort them for you again wh-whenever you run out. Y-you probably can’t read th-the label instructions, can you?”

Mettaton shook his head to confirm her suspicions, he hadn’t been able to make out anything from that bottle he had been trying to inspect earlier, the catalyst of this whole gigantic upset. It was in too small of a print for him and his bad eyesight.

“Y-yea...figures…” Alphys sighed. Because really, she wasn’t sorting his pills to baby him. She was both surprised and annoyed that large print labels weren’t an option, you’d think of all places a pharmacy would be willing to make accommodations. “D-don’t worry about it t-t-too much. L-like I said, I’ll so-sort them for you. Y-you just uh-” She tried to put on her best stern face, looking Mettaton in the eye. “Y-you gotta actually take them, okay?”

Once again, Mettaton didn’t respond verbally, he just nodded sadly. Alphys’s serious face melted, mouth turning into a frown. “H-hey, c’mere.” She muttered, stretching up so she could hook her arms around his neck, pulling him down so she could hug him better.

“Y-you’re alright,” She thunked her chin against the top of his head. “I-it’s okay, Metta, r-really. T-things are gonna get better...I-I gotta go to work, though.” 

She pulled back just enough to give him a quick kiss to the top of his head before she pulled away completely. “I-I’ll try to visit later this week, o-okay?”

Mettaton nodded in silence again. Alphys tried to give him a small grin before she slid off the chair. Ah, the second hardest part of Mettaton’s ridiculous tall chairs - getting down from them. She had to be careful not to fall too hard, doing pretty much a reverse of what she had done earlier and gripping onto the edge of the seat as she scooted down. Even with all those precautions, she still hit the floor with a small "oof". She waved goodbye to the two of them before waddling out the door, Papyrus got up to go lock it for her.

“Don’t-” Mettaton piped up, causing Papyrus to pause. He was finally starting to unfurl from his little ball of misery. “Don’t worry about it. It can be locked later. It’s not like I have to worry about people coming in whenever they want.”

Well, Papyrus supposed that was true. The only elevator that led up to this floor you had to get clearance to use, and a special key. Still it felt wrong to just leave the door unlocked like that, he’d get it later. Right now he assumed Mettaton wanted help, or maybe just attention. Papyrus went around the table, reaching out to help Mettaton to his feet. But his hands were batted away as he dragged himself off his chair. It was a short distance from the table to the couch. He was less tense, at least! Though in the absence of him being tensed up, he just seemed very tired. 

As Mettaton laid down on the couch, Papyrus decided to clean up from breakfast. He picked up he and Mettaton’s dishes, and folded up that breakfast tray Mettaton had been using. He didn’t really know where it went, so he decided to just leave it on the kitchen counter for now. The dishes were dropped in the sink, Papyrus saying to himself he’d actually clean them off later. Right now he figured Mettaton needed him, he was more than a bit worried, so he quickly returned to the living room.

“Are you alright, Mettaton?” Papyrus asked, standing next to where he was laying face-down.

“No.” Mettaton replied in a deadpan voice, pushing himself into an upright position.

“Can I help in any way?” Papyrus backed up a little bit as Mettaton righted himself, wanting to give him some space. 

“It’s alright, it’ll pass. This isn’t the first time this has happened...I’m sorry you had to see that.” Mettaton swung his legs to sit properly on the couch, putting aside the plushie he had been clinging onto. As he moved his arm, he noticed a new hole his teeth had made into his sweater sleeve. He lifted it up and frowned, “Oh dear, I made a hole…”

“You made a few holes.” Papyrus pointed out, “But, not to worry! I know how to repair knits! I could fix it for you!”

“Hm...maybe later.” Mettaton let his arm drop again, standing up from his chair and picking up the cat plushie again. “I think I’m going to go back to bed.”

“Back to bed?” Papyrus blinked, “But you just woke up!”

“If you recall, I said I was only up to feed Smirnoff,” Mettaton corrected, briefly looking to see if said cat would join him. He pouted when he didn’t, “I was expecting Alphys to come by later. Keep him company while I’m asleep, by the way.”

Papyrus set his jaw, upset that Mettaton had decided to spend his morning asleep. And he was also partially upset that he was going to have to find a way to waste time for a few hours by himself,  _ again.  _ He had been expecting spending the week with Mettaton to include more of well...spending the week with Mettaton. Not meandering a large, too empty house, while Mettaton slept the day away. He guessed it wasn’t too different of an experience than living with Sans, or maybe house sitting a cat. Though, the difference was Sans usually accepted help when Papyrus gave it to him. And he was a slightly better conversationalist.

“Are you always this sleepy?” Papyrus decided to ask, “You slept all day yesterday as well.”

Mettaton thought about that for a brief moment, “Only when I rather not be conscious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .


	3. Day 1: To Bake a Pretty Cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO very small note for this chapter!
> 
> I headcanon Undyne is an amputee, she's missing her right arm and has a prosthetic. She briefly shows up in this chapter, and may in a future chapter. It's not a huge plot point, and there's no big dramatic backstory behind it or anything, but it is referenced. I just saw it in a comic and went big :0 because as you can probably tell, I hoard disabled headcanons. So I Steals It.

By time Mettaton awoke again, it was 2 in the afternoon. During that time period, Papyrus had given up on trying to find something around the house and had decided to bring his phone down from upstairs after all. He was still trying to abstain from it as much as he could, but it was very hard to keep himself occupied with anything else. To be fair! This was a last resort after he’d already done some cleaning up around the place. He had decided to pick up from the morning’s events, considering not much was done besides some things being put in the sink. He’d done the few dishes that’d been dirtied, wiped down the table, and put away what Alphys had brought over. The remainder of the red velvet cupcake got put in the fridge, and the bottles of medicine that hadn’t been sorted Papyrus put in one of the cabinets in the downstairs bathrooms. It turned out Mettaton had two of them down here, three if you wanted to include the one built into Mettaton’s bedroom. But, Papyrus figured it would be rude to intrude on Mettaton while he was napping, so into one of the spare bathrooms it went. Now, the question was still why Mettaton had so many. But that was an answer Papyrus would probably never get, maybe it was to keep his extra makeup in, or maybe if he messed up his eyeliner in the kitchen he didn’t have to go all the way back to his bedroom to fix it! Or - well, actually that’s about all Papyrus could come up with. Something to do with makeup. 

On another note, Mettaton had also forgotten to bring his pill sorter into his room. And, again, Papyrus felt rude intruding. So he decided to leave it out on the coffee table in the living room, that way Mettaton couldn’t possibly miss it whenever he came around!

Which; was now! Papyrus looked up from Candy Crush as he heard Mettaton’s door creak open. Immediately he turned his phone off and set it aside, giving the groggy robot his full attention.

“Good morning, Mettaton! Or- afternoon! How are you feeling?” Papyrus greeted, making sure he was sitting straight.

Mettaton yawned, rubbing his good eye with his palm. “A little better…” He mumbled, moving to run his fingers through messy hair. He hadn’t brushed it that morning either, so now he had an extra messy bedhead after falling back asleep. Now would be a good time to brush it, probably. Now if he could just figure out where he put his hairbrush.

“I am very glad to hear it!” Papyrus replied, watching Mettaton start searching around the living room. Intuition told him what he was likely looking for, Mettaton was not one to slack on his appearance. Or...well most of the time, he noticed he had still not put on makeup today. 

Papyrus decided to get up and help him look, checking the drawers on the side table closest to him. The first one held no hairbrush, but he was surprised to find a chewed up vape pen and even more startled to find uhm...well, he guessed that _was_ legal in California. He quickly closed that drawer back up, deciding not to dwell on it for very long.

“That’s not mine,” Mettaton answered, without Papyrus even asking. He had his back turned, but the normally very chatty skeleton going silent and the sound of a drawer being hastily closed back up tipped him off. “Burgerpants left it up here, I don’t care enough to make him come get it.”

“I...see?” Papyrus blinked. Again, it _was_ legal, and he personally had no qualms with it. He was just - a bit surprised, is all! And the excuse that it belonged to Burgerpants was even more unexpected, didn’t he and Mettaton not get along?

Dwelling on the odd find wasn’t finding Mettaton’s lost item any faster though, so he decided to push past it and open up another drawer. In this one, he did find what he was looking for; a hot pink hair brush that had probably seen better days. The handle looked as if a dog had been using it as a chew toy, and many of the needles were popped out. He wondered why Mettaton hadn’t gotten a new one by now. Either way, he held it out in Mettaton’s direction with a wordless grin. The robot squinted at it, trying to figure out what he was looking at. 

Eventually it clicked, and his eye lit up, “Oh! Thank you, Papy!” Mettaton took it from him and sat down on the couch, running it through his hair as he tried to strike up a better conversation. “So, did you do anything interesting while I was out?”

“Not really!” Papyrus took his seat again as well, pulling his legs up to sit cross legged on the couch. He put his hands on his knees. “I did some chores and called Sans, that’s about it!”

Mettaton paused in his brushing motions for a moment, frowning “Oh..chores? Oh dear, Papy, darling, you didn’t have to do that. You’re the guest in my house, after all.”

“It is quite alright, I enjoy cleaning! I did not think you were going to do them, either!” Papyrus hadn’t meant that maliciously, but ouch. That did some out a lot meaner than he had intended it to...

Mettaton tapped his fingers against the chewed up brush handle, looking towards the ground. “I...I mean you aren’t wrong, I guess.” He said quietly, slowly starting up his brushing again.

Oh dear, Mettaton was getting upset again. Uh, quick, topic change!

“So!” Papyrus shouted, trying to regain control of the situation before it got out of hand again. He feared a repeat of this morning. “What do you plan to do with the rest of the day?”

“Hm...I’m not sure.” Mettaton put his hair brush down on the table, fishing out a hand mirror he kept hidden under the couch cushion and staring at his reflection in it. He sorted a few loose strands of hair into his bang with his fingers. “I think I’ll finish off that cupcake for lunch, and probably watch TV for a while.”

“Anything else?” Papyrus prodded, hoping to encourage Mettaton to think of some other activity to do.

The mirror was tucked back in it’s hiding place after Mettaton had decided his hair was good enough, he then laid down on the couch, pushing his hand into his cheek. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m probably going to go to bed early again tonight, since I don’t really have much that needs to be done today.”

The amount of times Mettaton kept bringing up sleeping as a way to waste time was getting concerning. Papyrus had now questioned the star’s changed sleeping habits at least twice, but he’d yet to get an actual answer. It was just very odd to him, he’d always known the robot as very high energy. Never standing still, never stopping to catch his breath, always dancing, twirling, bouncing on his heels. Over-excited and over-eccentric in just about everything he did, both on and off the stage. But Papyrus had been here for approximately a full day now, and all he’d seen Mettaton do so far was watch TV and sleep. 

Papyrus thought he was starting to form a solution to this puzzle of a problem in his head, but he couldn’t really confirm it without asking…

”Mettaton?” The robot opened his eye, rolling it in the other’s direction, “Are you depressed?”

Mettaton barked out a laugh at that, looping his arms around his belly and curling in on himself. Papyrus hadn’t expected such a loud, ungraceful noise to come out of him. He didn’t think he’d asked anything egregious, it was just an observation based on what he’d been seeing! 

Finally Mettaton sat up straight, curling both hands under his chin and batting his eyelashes sarcastically, giving Papyrus a lopsided grin.

“Oh me, oh my! What could’ve possibly given it away~?” He cooed as if talking to a small child, and then giggled darkly to himself. Dropping the act and flopping forward onto his stomach, looping his arms under his chin.

“Well, I have been noticing some symptoms!” Papyrus didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of a rhetorical question. “And I do have personal experience with the disorder, as Sans has it! He used to sleep all the time because he was depressed, too!” He paused for a moment, “Well, he still _does_ sleep all the time. But it’s for a different reason now, he’s gotten much better!”

Mettaton’s grin fell as Papyrus explained his reasoning. Either he wasn’t expecting Papyrus to actually answer him, or he didn’t appreciate being compared to Sans. It was also possible he didn’t expect to be called out like this...

“Oh...Good for him.” Mettaton’s voice was much less jovial as he responded this time, rolling over once more so his back was to Papyrus. He took the blanket that was still thrown over the back of the couch and wrapped it around himself, even covering his head. Not sure why, though, considering he was still dressed in that old sweater.

“Oversleeping isn’t very good for your health, you know! It can give you headaches, and actually, sleeping more doesn’t make you less tired! Sometimes it just makes you more tired, and more groggy!” Papyrus kept going on, though he wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish at this point. Maybe he thought going into this would make Mettaton see the error of his ways? Convince him to do something with the day other than sleep it away?

“Honey, if you want to start talking about the things I do that aren’t good for my health, we’re going to be here a while.” Mettaton continued to face away from Papyrus, “Oversleeping is probably the least of my worries.”

Papyrus wasn’t very happy with that answer, to say the least. Did...Mettaton not take care of himself? That didn’t feel right. To him, Mettaton had always been the poster child of self care and loving yourself. Those who had a less than favorable opinion of him even went so far as to call him a narcissist, not that Papyrus agreed. Was...that also a part of his stage persona? Papyrus was starting to question how much was an act, and how much was what Mettaton really was. Because it felt like the more Papyrus learned, the less he felt he knew about him. 

He felt that the “Mettaton” he had come to know and love, ever since the Underground, ever since BETA’s body, was just a fake person made up for the cameras. He supposed that was the fate of most public figures, especially celebrities. To put on a face and a fabricated personality for their fans, and cast away that mask behind closed doors. Though...that usually implied the person was secretly an asshole, or something much more heinous. Mettaton though...Mettaton just seemed…

Very sad. 

A lot sadder than Papyrus would’ve ever expected.

Mettaton gave up trying to get comfortable in his current position on the couch, sitting upright and huffing. His attention was caught by the colorful pill sorter that Papyrus had left on the table, and he grimaced. He was probably supposed to take those around this time, wasn’t he? Ugh.

“Here,” Mettaton pushed the blanket off himself, not bothering to fold it up this time. He just let it drop to the floor, and picked up the pill sorter, tucking it under his arm. “How about this; are you thirsty?”

Papyrus was still lost in thought, continuing to stare into space. The robot pursed his lips, reaching his arm out and snapping next to his face a couple of times. “Papy?”

Papyrus shook his head, rubbing his forehead as he snapped out of it. Ah, he hadn’t realized he’d zoned out. “Ah, apologies, Mettaton! I was just thinking about something. But, to answer your question, yes! I am a bit thirsty now that you mention it!”

“Then how about you come upstairs with me, and I can fix you something to drink?” Mettaton was already making his way towards the stairs before Papyrus could answer, “We can hang out in that little sitting area, I prefer the view from upstairs.”

Papyrus nodded, getting up and jogging after him. “Sounds fun!”

Mettaton’s hand leaned a bit too heavily on the guide rail as he took the lead up the stairs. The seating area was that small overhanging balcony that overlooked the floor below. It was sparsely furnished, with three armchairs gathered around a circular table. The only other things up here were a liquor cabinet, and on the opposite end of the room, close to Papyrus’s guest room, was a wet bar built into the wall.

Mettaton motioned at the chairs, “You can go ahead and set down, hun, I’m going to be just a minute.”

Papyrus took a seat in one of the armchairs as instructed, deciding to cast his gaze out the window. It was still the same city line, just slightly higher up. Sure, it was pretty, there was no denying that. He just couldn’t really tell what the difference was between here versus downstairs. He got bored of it rather quickly, deciding to see what Mettaton was doing instead.

He had stationed himself at the wet bar, two glasses had been pulled off of the shelves and placed next to him. One was a rather tall hurricane glass, and the other was a smaller rocks glass with curved sides. The hurricane glass already had something in it, whatever it was it was a deep brown color. Mettaton kicked open the door to the minifridge under the counter, taking out a pink of vanilla ice cream from it. He put one large scoop into the tall glass, but not the other one. He put a pink and white striped straw into it, and then set it to the side. 

Now, in the other one he put in a completely new mixture. Crushed ice, milk, some sort of brown syrup in a tall bottle, and he topped it off with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. That one also got a straw, but no ice cream. Mettaton put the ice cream back in the freezer so it wouldn’t melt, but he decided to leave everything else out on the counter for now.

He picked up both glasses and brought them over to where Papyrus was sitting, the skeleton got the one in the small glass. Mettaton smiled at him, nudging it in his direction. “Try it, tell me what you think.”

Though Papyrus didn’t see it get mixed into his cup, he had taken notice of the bottle of vanilla flavored vodka left out on the counter. Due to that, he was hesitant to take a sip. “Mettaton, I do not drink.”

“Oh, I know, and I respect that.” Mettaton took a seat in the opposing arm chair, throwing one leg over the other and leaning back. “Yours I made virgin.”

Papyrus’s eyebrows knitted in confusion, “Drinks...can be virgins?” He said slowly, he didn’t think he wanted to know what the opposite of that was.

Mettaton let out a loud giggle, covering his mouth with one hand. This kind of laugh was a bit more characteristic than the harsh barking noise he had made earlier. He shook his head, and sat his drink down on the table before he spilled it. “Oh, Papy, you’re so funny! Nono, sweetheart, it means I didn’t put any alcohol in it. But it still tastes kind of like a cocktail. Again, try it! It’s kind of like an iced coffee.”

Oh! That made much more sense than what Papyrus had been imagining, much less worrying too! Well, if it was non-alcoholic, he guessed he wasn’t opposed to giving it a try. After all, it did look rather tasty. It had a pale brown color, and on top of the generous helping of whipped cream and sprinkles, the straw was made of candy. Peppermint, Papyrus discovered upon putting it in his mouth. He took a cursory sip, and found the iced coffee comparison to be very accurate. A bit too sweet for him, though. But at this point he’d come to expect Mettaton to go a bit overboard on the sugar.

“It is good!” Papyrus decided as he pulled the straw from his mouth, “What do you call it?”

“A White Russian,” Mettaton explained. He reached over to pick up the pill sorter he’d brought up with him, glancing at his HUD to figure out what day of the week it was before he opened it up, “My recipe for it is somewhat non-traditional, you’re supposed to use plain cream. But personally I think with the ice cream it tastes so much better. I would’ve given you a scoop with yours, but your mix is actually rather different. I’m not sure how well it would’ve gone with it.”

“That’s alright! I like it as is!” Papyrus reassured him, and he did! The excessive amount of sugar took a bit of getting used to, but once he got past that he found himself rather enjoying it! He watched as Mettaton took the three pills from the “afternoon” slot from today and stuffed them into his mouth at once, picking up his mixed drink to wash it down with.

Papyrus frowned at that, “I...don’t think you’re supposed to mix those.”

“Oh, definitely not.” Mettaton closed the container back up, once again slumping back down in his chair and getting comfy. “But, Alphys isn’t around to tell me not to. So, why don’t we keep this between us?”

Papyrus...wasn’t sure how comfortable he was with that suggestion. At this point he was pretty confident in his guess that he was here to make sure Mettaton was healthy and happy, more than just to give him company and someone to talk to this week. He assumed part of that duty would be to report to Alphys if Mettaton was actively endangering himself, or neglecting his health in a major way. And he was also pretty sure Mettaton washing down a fistfull of medication with - he once more looked over to the ingredients still left out on the counter, trying to get a better look at that vodka bottle - 50% proof vodka! Oh dear, he was pretty sure that counted as neglecting his health in a major way or endangering himself.

But on the other hand, he was worried about betraying Mettaton’s trust. The robot could be quite sensitive sometimes. Well...a lot of times. There was no doubt that if Papyrus reported back to Alphys about what Mettaton was doing she would in turn call Mettaton to scold him about it. And then, worst case scenario, Mettaton might refuse to open up to him ever again. Or at least not again for the rest of the week. Which may as well have been “never again”, considering if he screwed up this week Papyrus wasn’t sure Mettaton would agree to have him over anymore. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, neither decision felt appropriate.

He guessed there was an option three, in which he just gently suggested to Mettaton that he should use something else to wash down his medicine with. Maybe one of these “virgin” drinks, as a compromise? He’d have to think about that more. Though he also thought, he thought that, maybe if he could get to the root of things...

“Mettaton, may I ask you a question?”

The robot shrugged, stirring his straw around in the glass, “Sure, darling, ask away.”

“Why are you depressed?”

Mettaton gave a giggle-snort at that, which was less expected than the pretty high pitched noise, but more expected than the bark, as far as Mettaton laughs go. But he did lower his drink to give Papyrus his attention, “You’re very blunt, you know that?”

“I just like getting to the point!” Papyrus explained, not taking the hint, “I find it confusing when people just beat around the bush about things instead of coming out and asking. It just doesn’t make sense!”

“Hm...I guess that’s fair.” Mettaton picked up his drink again and stared out the window as he tried to think of an answer to that. The city probably looked much prettier at night, but right now it was just mid-day. While that had it’s own charm, it wasn’t quite the same. And it was hard to have a gorgeous, moody think to. Mettaton’s lips parted, letting out an aborted noise, and closed it again, scrunching up his face in thought for a little while more. “...I guess it’s just ennui.”

Now, Papyrus wasn’t going to lie and say he knew very much about mental health, but he was pretty sure people didn’t get taken to hospitals and put on work leave for ennui. He had a feeling that Mettaton was lying to him.

“Ennui?” Papyrus prompted.

“It basically means boredom, from doing-”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know what it means! I am just asking you to explain your feelings more.”

Ah, apparently that was the wrong way to put that. As Mettaton took an even longer time to respond that time, stammering a bit and chewing on the end of his straw. “I-I mean, I guess...Like I said, things get boring after a while. And I, uhm…” He chewed his bottom lip, “I-I-I, I don’t really want to talk about this. Can we just - can we change the subject?”

Disappointed, but not wanting to upset Mettaton further, Papyrus nodded in agreement. “That’s quite alright. I just find talking about feelings to be very helpful!”

Mettaton flinched like he’d been struck, “I-I appreciate your concern, dear, I do. Just. It’s just - some things that work don’t work for everyone, you know?” Which was a weak excuse, but one that Mettaton wasn’t going to leave much room for argument on. Papyrus really didn’t want to push any buttons, so he let it be for now. 

“Well, if I may make a suggestion. If you are bored, sleeping and watching TV all day is not the most exciting activity.” Papyrus offered, setting aside his already emptied glass. Now he was just holding the stick of candy in his mouth, much like a cigar.

“Oh, probably not.” Mettaton went back to sipping from his drink. “But I don’t feel up to doing much else, really. I’ve had such low energy lately.”

“Not in - not in a battery way.” He felt the need to clarify before Papyrus started fretting again. “It’s...hard to explain.”

“Well, what about doing something around the house, then?” Papyrus got up from his chair. Instinctively he picked up his empty glass and went to rinse it out in the sink. “Perhaps a video game! You did say you had Animal Crossing, and dating sims! Or perhaps we could bake something together!”

“I do like baking, and I know a cheesecake recipe that’s not too involved…” Mettaton mused, finally turning his attention away from the window. “But I don’t have any of the ingredients, and I still don’t feel like going shopping.”

He was still on that, huh? Papyrus felt a little let down, he had been hoping he could use it as an excuse to buy the necessary materials for making Mettaton a proper dinner later this week. Though, genius that he was, he then got another idea!

“What if I asked someone to do the shopping for us, then you wouldn’t have to leave the house! And neither would I!” Papyrus said excitedly, coming back over to the table. “I believe Undyne gets off work soon, or I could ask Sans!”

Mettaton didn’t seem to like either of those options, he sunk backwards into his chair, taking a long sip of his drink. There wasn’t much left of it at this point besides some melted ice cream in the bottom, though. “Oh joy... _Undyne_ can go shopping for us. As if she’d ever even agree to it. Also, no offense, darling, but I don’t trust Sans to not just buy milk that expired three months ago and call it a day.”

“Hm…” Well, those were the only people Papyrus could think to call in a favor from right now. And, while Papyrus loved Sans, Mettaton did have kind of a point. Usually when the two of them went shopping together for themselves, Sans would climb in the basket and fall asleep in it. He’d wake up to be specific about what kind of ketchup he wanted, and to steal candy bars from the checkout line to put on the conveyor while Papyrus wasn’t looking. And that’s when the two were together! He’d probably be much worse if asked to go alone.

“Maybe…” Papyrus rubbed his chin in thought, tapping one foot. “Toriel? I am unsure of anyone else who could.”

“O-oh dear,” Mettaton blushed, “I’d feel just horrible asking that. I don’t really know her very well, and I’d hate to be a bother.”

Fair enough! The last thing he wanted to do was make Mettaton feel embarrassed. “Undyne it is, then!” Papyrus decided, considering Mettaton’s only complaint about her had been saying her name in a disdainful manner. “I will go ahead and call her right now!”

Mettaton choked on his straw as he tried to sputter out a protest, but Papyrus had stopped listening. He was now complying to the “no buts!” rule again. And he was going to get Mettaton some groceries, darnit! No matter how much he whined about it! After putting his cleaned out glass away, Papyrus went back downstairs to get his phone.

* * *

It was approximately one hour before Undyne was able to go to the store for them, and about another hour before she was done. She had called the two to come help her carry stuff up, and so now they were waiting around in the parking garage for her to arrive. Mettaton had shed his sweater at this point, maybe not wanting to be seen out in public with it. He was leaning against one of the structure pillars with his arms folded across his chest, one foot kicked up against the wall. Papyrus wasn’t sure why he was acting so sour, on the contrary to his companion he was rocking back and forth on his heels.

Undyne’s car was hard to miss, the tall, black, flame-and-shark-decaled van screeching to a halt in the parking space closest to them, and the fish woman herself wasting no time clambering out the front. Mettaton had always thought the pictures on the side were stupid, flames _and_ sharks? I mean, how contradictory can you get!

“HEYA, TWINK!” Undyne slammed the door open to her car, and jumped down to the ground. It was about a foot and a half drop, but she still had to go the extra mile to do a superhero landing after falling from it. 

“Hello, Undyne…” Mettaton grumbled, not acknowledging the nickname. He moved away from the pillar and walked towards the back of her car. Other than the small acknowledgement, he was trying to ignore her.

“Aw, is that all you got for me?” She teased, standing up straight and brushing off her shirt. She was still wearing her work clothes, which was simply a white tank-top with her high school’s logo on the left side of her chest and a lanyard with the same. She gave Papyrus a friendly punch in the arm in greeting, the skeleton muttering “ow” and rubbing where she’d hit him. No matter how many times she did that, it still hurt. 

Mettaton didn’t respond to her query, just opened up the back of her car and picked up the lightest bag he could find so he could claim he helped. He hooked it over his arm and went straight back to his sulking post.

Undyne had been more than happy to go shopping for them! But she’d probably gotten way too much. Papyrus had texted her a list of what all they wanted, including the ingredients Mettaton needed for baking, and his own requests for making spaghetti with. He also included a note of “and whatever else you think we might need!”. Which, Papyrus starting to realize had probably been a mistake. Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to let her use Mettaton’s card to pay for everything, as evidenced by the 50lb bag of flour she hefted up over her good shoulder. He was probably going to end up sending most of this home with Alphys the next time she came over.

Papyrus helped Undyne with looping some bags over her arms. She refused to make more than one trip if she could help it. Papyrus picked up a large bag of cat food, wheezing slightly with the effort. Undyne held out her arm for Papyrus to sling it over it. 

“Are you quite sure it will hold it?” Papyrus asked, hesitant on stacking too much weight on her prosthetic. He was afraid it would pop off, or even worse, break.

“Yea, it’s fine!” Undyne insisted, “I could probably lift a truck with this if I wanted to! Wanna see when we’re done?”

“Maybe another day! Mettaton and I are going to make a cake together!” Papyrus draped it over her arm, as instructed. She flexed it towards her chest to trap it between her forearm and shoulder. He was for sure he held it creak, but it did hold. Impressive!

Speaking of, Undyne cast her gaze over to Mr. Emo Kid At The Middle School Dance over there, who was idly kicking a pebble. 

“Yanno, I didn’t get to see ya’ when Alph picked you up! Didn’t cha miss me?”

“No.” Mettaton replied curtly, folding his arms across his chest. He seemed content to carry only his one little bag of strawberries. Though, to be completely fair, it wasn’t like he was being allowed to carry much anyways. Honestly, neither was Papyrus, he was now stacking bags around Undyne’s neck. One rested against her chest, and one resting against her back, so she wasn’t being choked out by either one.

She laughed at that response, typical Mettaton, “Missed you too, punk!”

Mettaton was less cheery, “If you missed me so much, you could’ve visited, you know.” He finally lifted his gaze from the ground to glare at her. “I didn’t see you once.”

Undyne’s grin dropped, head frills flattening down. “Hey, I wanted to! That place had weird as fuck visiting hours, dude! You know how hard it is for me to get time off? I can’t just get a sub on the spot!”

Papyrus held one last bag out to her, Undyne opening her mouth so he could place it in between her teeth. And, that was probably the last thing he could fit on his pack-fish. He took the last three bags himself, and closed up her van, and clicking the lock button on the car keys dangling from her lanyard, since she couldn’t have possibly have done it herself.

Mettaton didn’t say anything, but he did take the lead as they walked back through the hotel lobby. He had a different receptionist working today, this one being a rock golem monster. She averted her gaze as the trio passed the “employees only” gate to get to the private elevator. That’s how thick the tension in the air was, even bystanders could tell Mettaton was in a mood.

Mettaton dug out his keys and pressed the button to his floor, stepping to the back of the elevator and pressing his forehead against the windows as the others filed in. 

“...Alphys made time for it.” He finally said, breaking the tense silence.

Undyne’s fins flattened down, not exactly being able to snarl while she was holding the bag in her mouth. She spat it out, letting it clatter to the ground so she could talk. “Yea, and she had to pull a lot of strings to be able to come to all of those visits.”

Again, Mettaton didn’t answer, just continued to glare out the window.

“You know the least you could do is be fucking grateful for once.” Undyne spat.

Ah, perhaps calling Undyne had not been a genius idea after all! Papyrus wasn’t sure he wanted to be caught in the crossfire of this, so he ducked down to the floor to pick up what Undyne had dropped. Out of sight, out of mind, so he hoped.

“Oh, yes, let me shower her in thanks for doing the bare minimum!” Mettaton finally turned away from the window, taking a step towards Undyne. “Thank you _so so_ much darling dearest, for having me locked up for a month and then not even bothering to visit. Really, thank you, darling! You’re so thoughtful!”

“Hey, don’t drag Alphys like that! She nearly got in trouble at work for taking off as much as she did, just so she could come see you!” Undyne growled, straightening up a bit to make herself look bigger. “She didn’t want you in there, neither did I! It wasn’t up to us, and we really didn’t get a lot of say over what happened after you pulled your little fucking stunt-”

“I didn’t get to visit either!” Papyrus shouted suddenly, trying to put a stop to this before it escalated any further.

Mettaton and Undyne both snapped their heads in his direction. Staring at him like they’d forgotten he was even there. So...his out of mind plan had worked a little bit too well.

“...So you didn’t.”

“I mean, yea.”

They spoke at once, and they were right back go glaring daggers at each other. But, thankfully, the elevator opened back up before they could start up again, and Papyrus was all to quick to take the lead walking out into the foyer. Undyne snorted, hot steam coming out from the gills on the side of her neck. She shifted the bag on her shoulder and followed after him, Mettaton trailing to the pack of the pack. The door was already unlocked, Mettaton not bothering to lock it since they were just going down stairs. All Papyrus had to do was open it for them. As soon as Undyne crossed into the apartment, she dropped everything she was carrying at once.

Mettaton gave a high pitched gasp, scooping up Smirnoff and squishing him to his chest. “Be careful!” He shrieked, the cat had almost gotten his tail crushed under Undyne’s carelessness.

“Oh, calm down. None of this stuff is breakable!” Undyne then dropped the bag of flour she had been holding on her shoulder. It hit the floor with a loud crunch, looking down to see it’d dropped on top of a bag. “Uh…’cept that one.”

Mettaton swore under his breath, gathering Smirnoff up more securely in his arms and storming down the hallway into the kitchen.

Undyne watched him go, fins pinned flat against her head and hands on her hips. “Jeez, what’s got his panties in a twist?”

“Unsure!” Papyrus sat down his small share of the haul on the floor, much more gently than Undyne had. He moved the bag of flour to see what it had crushed. Well, it was a good thing the recipe called for the graham crackers to be broken down into crumbs anyways!

Undyne snorted, once again a visible puff of hot air exhaling out of her gills. “Eh, he’s always in a mood. I think he actively looks for things to be angry about. Anyways - hey!” She slapped her hand on Papyrus’s shoulder, the skeleton trying not to grimace when cold metallic fingers curled a bit too tightly on his scapula. “Tell me how that cake turns out! Metta’s baking is the one thing I miss about having him around. Probably the only thing I miss though!” She cackled at her own joke, letting go of Papyrus’s shoulder, giving him a two fingered salute as she walked out the door. “See ya!”

And, well, that was that. Papyrus decided to go check on Mettaton in the kitchen. He picked up some of the bags along the way, wanting to put all of this food away before they started cooking. He found Mettaton seated in a barstool at the island, tapping at his phone screen with one hand and holding a glass in the other. Papyrus also took notice of the half-finished cupcake from earlier, and….the bottle of vodka...

“If I may make a suggestion!” Papyrus said as he walked in, setting down the bags he’d been carrying on the countertop. “I would think it’d be easier to cook when at full mental capacity!”

“I’ll be fine,” Mettaton replied as he sat his phone down, making sure the screen was face-down. He took another sip from his glass. “I’ve done this recipe so many times I’ve memorized it.”

“Even so, that does not protect you from potential kitchen accidents!” Papyrus pointed out, sorting through all that Undyne had bought. The things he remembered being on the recipe list were set aside, and the things that weren’t he found a place to put away.

Smirnoff had returned from whatever shadow dimension he vanished too whenever he wasn’t around, and he was quite interested in the plastic bag Mettaton had left on the ground, sniffing at it and batting his paw against it. Papyrus tried to not be disappointed that Mettaton hadn’t even bothered to put away his very small share of the.

Mettaton didn’t say anything in resonse to the note about kitchen accidents, instead just giving a noncommittal hum as he poured himself another glass. “Again, love, I appreciate the concern, but I’ll be fine. How about you be a doll and finish putting stuff up for me? I don’t feel too well.”

If Papyrus was any meaner, he would’ve pointed out that perhaps he didn’t feel well because this was his second - no third, if you counted the refill - drink of the day. But, unfortunately, Papyrus was probably the sweetest man alive. 

So instead, he just said, “Certainly!” And went back around to the foyer to grab the rest of the groceries. For the most part Undyne had listened to their list, even if she’d bought way too much of everything. Cheesecake ingredients, pasta, marinara sauce, vegetarian meatballs, etc. Some other essentials they hadn’t asked for, but still likely needed, like soda, more instant ramen, some more milk...a very large pack of triple A batteries? Papyrus picked up the box, puzzled.

“Ah, Mettaton?”

“Oh! Snack cabinet!” Mettaton noticed what Papyrus had been about to question about. He pointed at the cupboard Papyrus remembered the arts and crafts supplies being stored in. “Sweet of her, but that doesn’t change anything.”

Papyrus decided to not ask! Instead he just nodded, and slid the box of batteries between the bottles of Elmer’s Glue and bag of rhinestones.

“I think that should be all of it!” Papyrus announced, stepping back and putting his hands on his hips as he admired his work. Not that there was much really too admire, it was all put away. But, it was the thought that counted! And the thought was that at least Mettaton now had something in his pantry! Even if it wasn’t much, it still made the place feel just a little bit less vacant!” “So! What do we do first?”

“Find me a cake pan.” Mettaton said simply, getting up from his chair to finally come help. “The first thing we need to do is make the crust, because we have to let that sit in the fridge for about half an hour. That way it’s already good to go when we finish making the cake mix itself.”

That made sense! Now, he just had to figure out where a cake pan would actually be. At his own house, he kept those kinds of “specialty” cooking supplies in the lower cabinets, since he rarely pulled them out. He squatted down to check if Mettaton did the same while the robot in question started prepping the mixture that was about to go into it. Which, while helpful that he was getting a head start on it, it would’ve been more helpful if he had instead pointed out where these things he was asking for were stored. He did eventually find the pan on his own, his intuition about the lower cabinets being correct. It was a circular metal thing that was surprisingly not pink, or even rose gold! It was just a plain grey. He stood back up and sat it down next to Mettaton, who was stirring languid circles in a mixing bowl. He didn’t seem to be entirely present, eye unfocused and staring into space as he continued rotating the spoon around. He flinched when the pan made a noise as it hit the counter, turning his head to squint at what it was, much like the hairbrush from earlier.

“Ah!” The life returned to his eyes when he figured out what he was looking at. “Thank you, Papy!” 

He leaned over the pan and scooped his mixture into it, using the spoon to bat it down flat at the bottom. “Could you go ahead and start preheating the oven for me, doll? Set it to 300.”

Papyrus nodded again, “Sure thing!” Walking around to the other wise of Mettaton so he could reach the buttons on the oven. It didn’t take him very long to turn it to the specified settings, and soon after he propped his elbows on the counter to watch Mettaton work. He was still batting down the crust to the bottom, even though he had been doing that for a few minutes now, and it looked thoroughly flattened out by now. Even so, Mettaton kept tapping at it, seeming to not be even getting the full circumference of the pan now. He was just stuck in a loop.

“What’s after that part?” Papyrus asked gently, trying to get Mettaton’s attention away from the repetitive action.

Mettaton blinked rapidly, suddenly pulling away from the pan, like he hadn’t realized what he’d been doing. “Oh, uhm, well after that, this goes into the fridge. It will stay in there while we’re making the rest, that way it’s already good to go when…” He paused, “I...already said that, didn’t I?”

“You did, but it’s alright! It’s good to reiterate instructions sometimes! Especially since I have never made this recipe before!” Papyrus took the prepared cake pan away from Mettaton, setting it on one of the empty shelves inside the fridge. “So, what comes after that?”

Mettaton tapped his forehead as he tried to recall, “Strawberries! The strawberries are next.”

Papyrus was starting to realize he probably should’ve been more firm about not letting Mettaton drink before they started cooking. But, it was much too late now, the damage had already been done. It looked like he would just have to do his best to keep Mettaton on track and present. This would’ve been much easier if Mettaton had actually shown him the recipe they were going to be working with, that way Papyrus could try and take charge of the project when needed. But he had just insisted he knew it by heart and didn’t need it.

Mettaton gently shooed Smirnoff away from the bag that had been left on the floor, making that same kiss-click nose as he nudged the cat away. He picked it up once the white beast had moved, taking out both of the boxes of strawberries and setting them on the island.

“Now, half of these will be for the toppings, and the other half will go into the cake itself.” Mettaton explained, indicating to one box and then the other. “The topping half I’d like to soak in vodka for flavoring, which is why I brought this down here.”

Cooking With A Killer Robot, or it’s rebranded name, Gorgeous Robot, had been cancelled some time ago, but Mettaton still explained his process as if he was presenting it to an audience. He took a bowl with a lid, the bottle of vodka he’d been drinking from, and a knife to cut up the strawberries with, and set them all on the island as well. Not a cutting board though, he just cut them straight on the counter.

Though the explanation that the vodka was part of the recipe at least gave an excuse to why it was down here, it hadn’t explained why Mettaton had been sampling the ingredients, as it were. But again, Papyrus wasn’t about to point it out, he was just very interested in what Mettaton was saying!

“I don’t think I’ve ever had strawberries prepared like that!” Papyrus didn’t like alcohol, but he did know that when you cooked something in wine, the actual alcoholic parts got boiled out. He’d learned that from a cooking show! But, not Mettaton’s, he had never cooked with wine. He was going to assume the same concept applied here.

“Oh, why do I keep forgetting that?” Mettaton paused for a moment, “Apologies, love, I’m used to drinking socially. I could make this cake without this step, if you prefer? For the record, it doesn’t make you drunk or anything, it just gives the strawberries a bit of a different flavor.”

“No, no, go ahead!” Papyrus waved his hand dismissively, “I am interested in trying it, I like to try new things!”

Mettaton nodded, going back to showman mode as he explained to Papyrus what he was doing, as he was doing it. “So, you want to cut the tops off, of course. And then you split them in half, it makes things much easier when you go to put them on top of the cake if one side of them is flat.” Mettaton placed the unwanted stems back in their box for easy cleanup, and put the wanted halves at the bottom of his bowl. He put the knife down and picked up the vodka bottle, showing the label off to Papyrus. In this moment, Papyrus was both his camera and his live studio audience, he read the label with interest. “I’m using chocolate vodka here, the brand doesn’t matter. Chocolate isn’t my personal favorite flavor to drink, but it’s very good for cooking sweets! It’ll kind of make the finished product taste like chocolate-dipped strawberries.”

Mettaton pulled the bottle back towards himself once Papyrus was done examining it, twisting off the cap. “Which, you can use these for, actually! You’d prep the strawberries in the same way, just without cutting them up first. And, of course, dipping them in melted chocolate at the end. These ones, however, I’m just going to be coating in a little bit of powdered sugar. Anyhow, so then you want to pour two shots of vodka…” He tipped the bottle, letting it’s contents spill into the bowl.

And...let it keep pouring.

…

And...keep pouring.

…

Still going.

…

Any minute now.

…

“Uhm, Mettaton?” Papyrus finally ventured to ask, seeing as the berries were drowned in what was definitely more than two shots.

Mettaton looked up, humming a questioning note. He was still pouring. “Something wrong, dear?”

“Er-” Papyrus was transfixed with the never ending stream of liquor. “Nevermind.”

“Ah, well. Alright then!” He finally freed the strawberries from their watery fate, tilting the bottle back up right before it overflowed the edges of the bowl. Papyrus felt like the water tension was the only thing keeping it from spilling. Mettaton clicked the lid on it, and some vodka spilled onto the counter. Well, so much for not overflowing. “And then we let these soak! They’ll be done by time the cake is ready for toppings. You could soak them longer, traditionally overnight, but I’m a bit impatient.”

Papyrus gave Mettaton’s “performance” a little golf clap, Mettaton faking bashful and putting a hand to his cheek.

“Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind,” He cooed, giving that trademarked grin at the praise. Next he opened up the other box of strawberries, once again not getting a cutting board as he chopped these ones up too. “Now, like I said before, these ones will actually go in the cake. I’m making a sort of filling out of them.”

Papyrus nodded along, watching as Mettaton swiftly cut the fruit into little chunks and dumped them into the box. “I was wondering, do you bake often?”

“Not as much as I’d like, and definitely not as much as I used to.” Mettaton picked up the container of cut strawberries, waking over to the blender. He poured them in, and then a little bit of starch. “After my cooking show got cancelled, I don’t really have an excuse to do it anymore.”

“Why did that show get cancelled, anyways?” Papyrus turned his chair to face him at his new spot in the kitchen. “I thought you really liked doing that one!”

“Well, of course I did, darling. I like doing all of my shows.” Mettaton pressed the button to turn the blender on, keeping his hand on the lid. “But, you accidentally create mustard gas _one time_ and suddenly the producers won’t let you use a kitchen set anymore. Because you’re “not careful enough” and “made a serious health hazard.””

Mettaton huffed, pink steam coming out of his vents and rolling his eyes. He clicked the blender off once it was done stirring, “Now, here’s another tip. This recipe does call for you to puree the strawberries, but I like it better when it’s a little chunky.”

“That’s just silly!” Papyrus agreed, once again turning his chair so he could watch Mettaton at the stove. The robot transferred the contents of the blender into a pot, covering it and turning the burner to a low heat. “Accidents happen! I don’t see why one mistake means you deserve to get cancelled!”

 _“Thank you!”_ Mettaton pointed his spatula at Papyrus, leaning his elbow against the stove. (Wasn’t that turned on…?) “Finally, someone who gets it! It’s not my fault they made the print on the cleaning chemicals so tiny, they know I have issues with small print! I was just trying to help out the cleaning staff, but nono, that’s illegal, I guess.” 

Mettaton turned back to the stove, taking the lid off the pot and stirring his spatula around in the boiling goop so it wouldn’t stick. “Honestly, they’d been trying to get that one pulled for a while. Something about too many of my recipes involving “ingredients inedible to the general public”, whatever that means. I mean, it’s my show! If I want to make glue eclairs, I’ll make glue eclairs! I bet they just used the mustard gas incident as a scapegoat to get rid of it.”

“Well, I for one liked your recipe for glue eclairs!” Papyrus huffed, feeling for Mettaton’s plight. “I also liked the sequined french fries, I made Sans try it!”

“Oh, did you now? I’m glad to hear it!” Mettaton looked up from his stirring, “Maybe I’ll have to print you a copy of that scrapped cookbook I started writing and could never find a publisher for.”

Mettaton took the pot off the burner before it got too gross and sticky, turning off the stove and setting it aside to cool down.

“I’d love to have a copy of your cookbook! It’s a shame you couldn’t get it published!” Papyrus’s eyes followed Mettaton as he started picking up some of the ingredients left out on the counter. His arms making multiple loops around the items as he tried to carry them all back to the island so he could sit down again. “Say, have you ever considered making a cooking show online? Perhaps on Youtube, or something? If you enjoy doing it, I don’t see why one station telling you to stop should make you stop cooking forever!”

“I’ve thought about it,” Mettaton brought his mixing bowl back to himself, licking the spoon clean of graham cracker crumbs and butter before using it to scoop in the cream cheese. Papyrus didn’t think it was gross, Mettaton didn’t have germs or drool of any kind. Or...at least he thought so, but now the very small amount of clear, sparkly fluid on the spoon was making him have second thoughts. “It goes back to the whole “I don’t like doing dishes and cleaning” thing. On set we had staff to clean up after I was done filming. So unless I wanted to call housekeeping up here every time I did a new episode - can you hand me that whisk, dear? And also get ready to grab that pot on the stove.”

“Of course!” Papyrus got up and retrieved the aforementioned items.

Mettaton held out his mixing bowl, “Just pour it in there, please. Thank you.”

Papyrus followed the instructions given to him, tipping the pot and letting the vibrant red sauce slop into the cake batter. That made it sound not very appetizing, but that was the only word he could think to describe the viscous near-neon liquid. 

Mettaton brought the bowl closer to himself again, taking the whisk Papyrus had sat down on the counter and stirring it up. “Thank you, love, you’ve been a wonderful help.”

Papyrus had barely helped at all besides bringing things from point a to point b, but he was going to take the compliment regardless!

Mettaton whisked a few more things into his batter before he called it done. Vanilla, powdered milk, and two eggs. Er...three eggs. He messed up the first one, ending up squeezing it too hard and it shattering in his hand, getting egg goop all over his glove. “Eugh…” he muttered, pulling it off and tossing it aside. Not like he didn’t have others.

“One last thing,” Mettaton said, picking up another egg to try again. More delicately this time. “Can you take that cake pan out again, please? We’re just about done here.”

“Okie dokie!” Papyrus went over to the fridge again, and as he opened it was reminded of the other, already made cheesecake he’d noticed earlier. Mettaton had already kind of had his lunch with the rest of the cupcake, but what about his own lunch? Hm...

“Mettaton! I have a suggestion to make!” The skeleton turned around from the fridge, “How about while this cake is baking, we finish off the rest of the one in the fridge? That way, the tray will be clear for the new one!”

“Sounds good to me.” Mettaton was now mixing the eggs in and humming to himself, making sure it was all properly blended together. “Still need that pan though, dear.”

“Yes, of course! I already have it in my hand!” Papyrus marched forward and presented the pan to Mettaton like it was a silver platter. As well as setting the aforementioned cake stand on the unoccupied end of the table.

Mettaton nudged Papyrus’s arm to get him to properly lower the pan, pouring his mixture into it. Slowly, making sure it ended up even. “And, well, this is the boring part. Now this goes into the oven.”

Papyrus was expecting Mettaton to ask him to do it, and was about to take the pan back. But Mettaton took it himself before he could, placed it on a cookie sheet, and then slid it into the oven. Once he was done, he plopped back down at the kitchen island, examining the glove he hadn’t removed yet. It wasn’t stained with egg juice, but it was red from when he had been chopping strawberries. For the sake of not looking like a bloodstained Micheal Jackson, he decided to pull that one off as well.

“And, now, all we do is wait! I’ve set a timer on my HUD.” He tapped his right cheek, the one under his bad eye. He cut himself a slice of the cake Papyrus had brought down, setting it out on a paper towel. “Plenty of time for us to eat! Also, I’m surprised you didn’t insist on something other than sweets for lunch.”

“Well, normally I would!” Papyrus admitted, taking a slice for himself as well. “But, I am excited to try your baking, and this one is already finished!”

“Oh, well uhm...sorry to disappoint, but I didn’t make this one.” Mettaton frowned, “There’s a monster that runs a bakery down the street, very lovely woman, I visit her shop a lot. One of the first places I went to when I got home the other day. I told her about my stint in the hospital and she insisted I take that one home for free.”

The other day? And Mettaton had gotten home...two days ago, three counting today? Papyrus looked at the slice of cake, it was rather large. He tried to imagine how big the cake would’ve been when it was a full piece.

“I..tend to stress eat.” Mettaton admitted, seeing where Papyrus’s head was going. “It’s not my proudest habit.”

“I...see…” Papyrus decided not to prod. He guessed that was a least a little bit of a better habit than drinking. He was slightly bummed that the cake wasn’t Mettaton’s own cooking. But! Cheesecake was still cheesecake, no matter who made it! “Was it Muffet? I thought you didn’t like her.”

“Oh no, I hate her guts.” Mettaton huffed, forking a piece of cake into his mouth. “I don’t think you’d know the monster I’m talking about. She’s a pink elephant named Dolly?”

Papyrus shook his head, he’d never heard of her.

“Not surprised,” Mettaton swallowed the piece he’d been chewing on. “She prefers to advertise through word of mouth. I’ve tried to offer to advertise for her, but I guess she likes to keep her business small. You should try her sometime, though! She’s about a mile from here; little pink storefront, cute little sign with an elephant on it. Can’t miss it, again, very lovely woman.”

“I will keep her in mind!” Papyrus committed the description of the store to memory, finally digging into his slice of cake as well.

The two of them sat in silence for a long length of time, it was hard to say how long exactly without looking at the clock. Mettaton was just happy to sit in someone else’s company, and kept himself busy with his phone and petting Smirnoff, who was cuddled up in his lap. Papyrus was less content with the situation, finding the silence uncomfortable and awkward. He had been kind of thinking about something, and he’d been able to take his mind off of it while they were putting the cake together, but now that he wasn’t busy anymore, it was right back to the forefront of his mind.

“Mettaton?” Papyrus broke the silence with, making the robot look away from his phone. “May I ask you something?”

“You’re so full of questions…” Mettaton hummed, setting his phone aside on the counter. Once again, making sure it was facedown. He laced his fingers under his chin, leaning into them. “But sure, what is it?”

“Well, it’s just that you were quite mean to Undyne earlier.” Papyrus tapped his fork against the counter. “Why? It was very kind of her to go shopping for us.”

Mettaton’s face twisted into a scowl, pink steam puffing out of his facial vents. It caused Smirnoff to wake up, slinking down from Mettaton’s lap and trotting into the other room, he’d come back when the robot decided to calm down. So supportive, Smirnoff.

“I’m mad at her right now,” Mettaton said through gritted teeth, “And, to be perfectly honest, I really wish you hadn’t called her.”

“Oh…” Papyrus felt a little guilty, “I’m very sorry. But, again, why? Did she do something wrong?”

“It’s more what she didn’t do,” Mettaton growled, rapidly drumming his fingers against the counter. “It’s a very _very_ long story, but all you really need to know is she absolutely hates me. I think she wants me dead.”

“WHAT? Hates you?! Wants you dead?!” Papyrus was shocked! “Why do you think that?”

“She won’t say it outright, but haven’t you picked up on it? She acts like it.” Mettaton explained, his claws starting to flex in and out of his fingertips as he continued to tap them against the counter.

Papyrus frantically searched his memories for what Mettaton could possibly be talking about. Sure, they butted heads a lot, and Undyne got mad at him sometimes. But that didn’t mean she violently hated him! In fact, he was very sure she cared about Mettaton quite a lot!

“I...haven’t picked up on anything of the sort?” Papyrus admitted, becoming more and more confused. Where on earth was this coming from?

“She only did the grocery shopping for us because _you_ asked her to. If I had done it, she would’ve just laughed in my face.” Click, click, in and out, in and out...his claws were starting to make scuffs on the flawless countertop.

“No, she was completely understanding when I told her why you didn’t want to go grocery shopping, it wasn’t just because I asked for it. She bought you those batteries, without either of us even asking, remember?” 

“She’s sneaky about it, she’s trying to pretend to you that she doesn’t hate me.” Mettaton stammered out, sounding more and more paranoid by the minute. “She won’t outright say she hates me, she just pretends she likes me. But, I know it, I know she wants me dead.”

That...really didn’t sound like Undyne at all. And Papyrus was getting nowhere fast, now he was just wondering where Mettaton had gotten the impression Undyne was that kind of person. He had lived with her for a full year, for Pete’s sake! He should know very well she was not that kind of a person!

“Mettaton, I will be honest with you,” Papyrus said slowly, “That does not sound in character for Undyne at all.”

“She puts on a different face around you,” Mettaton tried to justify, though at this point he wasn’t sure if it was to himself or to Papyrus. “So-so to you, it seems out of character. But-but I know how she really is, and I know that she’s sneaky.”

Actually, Papyrus would say quite the opposite. It was nigh impossible for Undyne to keep a secret, she was quite loud and boisterous. And he would say he knew her pretty well, she was his best friend after all!

“Is...this what you were arguing about regarding hospital visits?” Papyrus tried to see this from Mettaton’s point of view. Even if his point of view was very...twisted, it seemed. “Mettaton, just because she couldn’t make time to visit you, doesn’t mean she did not want to. It is very hard to get time off as a high school teacher, if your hospital’s visiting hours were as odd as she said they were, there is not much she could’ve done about it.” 

He was trying to help, make Mettaton see this from a more rational point of view. To see that one disagreement and a lack of visitation didn’t mean she hated his rotten guts and wanted him dead.

But he didn’t get very far with it, because before Mettaton had to respond, his bad eye flashed pink. “Oh! The timer’s done!”

Mettaton had flipped from his nervous, grouchy mood straight back to chipper on a dime. He quickly got up and slid his cake out of the oven, setting the tray on top of the stove. “We’ll have to let it cool down for about another hour, and then we can decorate it! Unfortunately we won’t be able to eat any of it until tomorrow, though. Cheesecake is finicky, it needs to refrigerate overnight.”

Papyrus was trying to pay attention to Mettaton’s cooking instructions, but he still wanted to continue the conversation that had been interrupted. “I see! But, as I was saying, I think it would help for you to call Undyne and talk to her! I find communication to be the healthiest way to settle disputes.”

Mettaton came back over to the island, picking up his container of vodka-soaked strawberries, talking just a bit too loudly, and it was hard to say if his words were even meant for Papyrus anymore. “Also, we can go ahead and strain these! You can boil the vodka into jam and make a lovely drizzle for the top of the cake, but I don’t have any jam. Oops, guess I’ll just have to drink it~! Wouldn’t want to waste, after all!”

Mettaton put the container down on the counter none too gently, ripping open his utensil drawer and loudly digging around for a hand strainer.

“Er, that’s lovely, Mettaton.” Papyrus stared at him, troubled by the odd behavior. “But what do you think of calling Undyne? I would be happy to mediate the conversation, and I am sure she’s not busy at this hour!”

Mettaton found the strainer, picking up his strawberry bowl. “Can you find me a mason jar? There should be some in the pantry.”

“I can!” Papyrus got to his feet, already walking towards it. “However, I would like an answer to my question regardi-”

“Actually, you know what? It’s fine. Nevermind, I can get it. Just make sure Smirnoff doesn’t get into the cake please! Thank you love, kiss kiss!” Mettaton rushed towards the pantry door, shoving Papyrus away from it and slamming the door behind him.

So you _could_ slam an accordion door...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cringe cameos my own fail fursona  
> In case you were wondering what that small part was about :pensive:


	4. Day 1: Why They Can't Have Just Been Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning that this is a pretty heavy chapter!
> 
> And only one day late to Undertale's anniversary happy birthday Undertale have a depressed robot

Mettaton hadn’t come out from the pantry.

Papyrus had waited very patiently for him, not wanting to give off the impression he was chasing Mettaton down or cornering him in some way. Besides, he wanted to give him some time to cool off from...well, whatever that had been. Papyrus still couldn’t quite figure out what had went wrong. One moment Mettaton was fine, happy even, and then the next he was freaking out and locking himself in closets. He had kind of gotten himself in a tizzy rattling off his delusion involving Undyne and her presumed death wish against him. Which, while odd, wasn’t the most baffling thing about that whole scenario. The rest of it? That’s where he was lost. No matter how many times Papyrus ran it through his head, he couldn’t figure out where a switch had been flipped, or what had flipped it.

So, he’d just wait and see if letting Mettaton have some time to himself would smooth over some frazzled nerves. Hopefully he’d be feeling better by time he came around, and Papyrus could reiterate his wantings to discuss a conversation with Undyne in an environment with lower tensions. Then again, expecting Mettaton to hold a healthy conversation in which he was honest about his feelings, and why he had reacted the way he did, was probably hoping for way too much...but Papyrus liked to think himself an optimist.

Regardless, Papyrus didn’t want to upset him more than he already had by invading his space when he was giving clear signals to back off. Mettaton communicated his feelings surprisingly rather nonverbally, for someone who usually wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if you were upsetting him.

But! In the meantime, Papyrus decided to make himself useful. It’d at least give Mettaton a little bit less to stress about once he got over whatever it was he needed to get over. Additionally, it gave Papyrus something to occupy himself with. For starters, he had looked up a recipe for strawberry cheesecake online. While he wasn’t for certain that this was the one Mettaton used, he didn’t think it would matter much. Since all he really wanted to know was what one was meant to do once it came out of the oven, which he assumed wasn’t recipe specific. As according to the instructions, he found a large knife and used it to cut the cake free from it’s pan, setting it on the cake tray they had previously emptied. For now, he decided to just lid it and put it in the fridge. Decorating could come later, when Mettaton was feeling more up to it. There wasn’t much Papyrus could do in the decorating department anyway, the robot had absconded with the fancy drinky strawberries.

What else could he do while he waited for Mettaton to cool off…? Put away the ingredients, he guessed. The perishables went into the fridge, of course, as for the rest of it...He picked up a box of starch and stared at it, and once more to the closed pantry door...He decided to set it, as well as the other items that belonged in there, on an unoccupied portion of the counter for now. He then moved to fill up one half of the sink with hot soapy water, and submerged the dirty dishes in them. That way, nothing would get caked on while he-

Somewhere in his head, Papyrus heard the word “ _ caked? _ ” echoed in Sans’s voice. Oh no, he’d just punned. And it wasn’t even intentional.

_ Stuck _ on, thank you. Things such as fruit syrup and cream cheese were notoriously sticky, it’d be easier to clean everything off when he came back to them later. Because he wasn’t going to scrub them down properly immediately, there was still cleaning to be done in the rest of the kitchen. There were red juice stains on the pink marble from where Mettaton hadn’t used a cutting board, and a mess from the smashed egg, smeared on the ground and the kitchen island. Papyrus found one of Mettaton’s dirty gloves not far from the egg mess. Right - he had taken those off, Papyrus almost forgot. Now where did the other one go…? He had to search the floor for a bit to figure out where it was. Which, this was why you didn’t just throw things where ever, Mettaton! Once he eventually found it’s other half, he sat them down close to where he’d put the pantry items. He still needed to ask Mettaton about what the laundry situation was, he had just forgotten to with everything else that had happened that day.

After his work was done, Papyrus stepped back to observe the kitchen as a whole with his hands on his hips. Everything seemed to be for the most part straightened out, save the dishes still in the sink and some of the things he couldn’t do while Mettaton was hiding in the pantry…

Speaking of which, Papyrus set his jaw and looked over to the closed door. Mettaton had still not come out. He noticed there were no lights coming from the small gaps in the frame, Mettaton hadn’t turned the lights on in there. He wondered why...

Papyrus looked away from the door with a deep exhale, bracing his hands against the counter and propping his hips against it. Once again, he stared at the floor, and tried to go over what had transpired in his head. No matter how many times he ran through the scene, he still couldn’t pinpoint where things had gone wrong, or why Mettaton had reacted like he did. Was Undyne some sort of...trigger? No, couldn’t be it, frankly that made no sense. Undyne had never done anything to Mettaton, nothing heinous at least. Sure she heckled him a little bit, but that was just Undyne being Undyne.

Maybe he should stop worrying about how Undyne played into the equation, because no matter which way he turned it he couldn’t see how she fit into all this. All he’d gathered so far was that Mettaton’s hospital visit had lasted one month, and Undyne hadn’t visited. Well, hadn’t been able to visit, she had some very valid excuses, in Papyrus’s opinion. So...Long hospital stay + no visiting =...intense hatred? Well, putting it that way, Papyrus could kind of see how that gave the impression Undyne didn’t like him very much. But he knew that wasn’t true! And he knew Undyne probably would’ve visited if she was able to! Which is why if the two of them just talked it out…!

But, that still didn’t completely piece this whole thing together. There was still the part where “gave the impression she doesn’t like me” jumped to “hates me so much she wants me dead”. Which...is where Papyrus hit a dead end. Undyne had mentioned...something about a stunt? What did that mean? Unfortunately, one short argument that Papyrus had been the bystander too wasn’t the richest vein of information. 

Maybe it’d be better to just focus on the here and now instead.

Papyrus moved away from the counter and began to pace, rubbing fingers into his chin and squinting at the floor. He thought better when he was moving, got that blood pumping and all that - er, metaphorically speaking. 

One month...one month...That was quite a long time. How had he not heard about it? Why had he not been informed of it? Admittedly, he and Mettaton weren’t bestest friends or anything of the like. But surely something that drastic, and lasting for that length of time, Alphys would’ve at least mentioned it in passing at least once. Or, if not Alphys, the news. Mettaton was a celebrity after all! And if Alphys wasn’t willing to share details of Mettaton’s private life, god knows those awful celebrity gossip news stations would. Thinking about it again, perhaps it was better that the paparazzi hadn’t caught wind of Mettaton’s hospital visit. And he had been on hiatus for a while, even prior to the visit and prior to being put on work leave. Perhaps that was why nobody batted an eye when no one heard anything of him for a month.

...Why had he been on hiatus, anyhow?

Mettaton had never really announced it, not officially. The filming of new episodes were delayed, again and again until he just labeled them as “on hiatus”. Live performances got rescheduled, and then eventually cancelled entirely. Concerts he straight up just stopped announcing. Slowly until he just stopped putting an official schedule for new things to come out. 

Maybe that’s when Papyrus should’ve started questioning things harder. Sans insisted that Mettaton was just a moody, impulsive person. “He’s probably pissed at someone, don’ worry ‘bout it too hard.”, he said. He trusted Sans, and believed that it must be some mundane reason that Mettaton had decided to take an extended break. Even the brightest stars get burnout sometime, he guessed.

But...it was another thing he wondered why he’d never heard Alphys talk about. She’d been getting better about opening up about her feelings, talking about the current stressors in her life, and how often those things included Mettaton. Usually such talks went to Undyne, but considering how much the two hung out, Papyrus was often also in the room to hear it.

He visited Undyne and Alphys’s shared house quite often, actually! She had kept up giving him cooking lessons in her free time, and he was getting much better! Alphys had also introduced the two of them to Dungeons and Dragons, saying Mettaton would never really play with them, even when he was still living there. He claimed he was quote “too gay to do math”, end quite. Whatever...that meant...

He was getting off track. Papyrus forced himself to stop reminiscing and return to the present as he stopped pacing in circles. As he came back from his thoughts, his attention was caught by the window. The sun was setting over the cityline, bathing the kitchen in a deep orange. Was it really that late…? Papyrus turned towards the pantry door again, how long ago had he gone in there? He was starting to get worried.

Walking closer to the pantry door, he stopped at a close distance and stared at it. As if staring at the pastel pink painted wood would give him some sort of answer. He was not stupid, he knew it didn’t take this long to find a mason jar. Mettaton was probably in there doing...well, actually he wasn’t sure. Highly possible he just wanted the peace and quiet, or maybe...Papyrus’s mind refused to wander to darker places. But, in the interest of being polite, Papyrus opted to knock on the door rather than just barging in.

“Mettaton? Are you still in there?”

Papyrus already knew the answer to that question, it was quite obvious. There wasn’t anywhere Mettaton could have gone to, unless he had some secret door in the back of his pantry. And as fun as that sounded, Papyrus didn’t think that was a thing. Papyrus had been lost in thought for a while, but he didn’t think he was so zoned out he would’ve missed Mettaton slipping out. Still, despite all these factors, he got no response from the other side of the door. Once more he set his jaw, staring at it again.

Papyrus considered knocking again, but, if Mettaton hadn’t answered the first time, there was no saying he’d answer this time. So, instead - “Mettaton! In the interest of making sure you are safe I will be coming in! Please do not be offended!”

He slid the door aside after he’d made himself clear and poked his head in. As suspected, the overhead light was turned off, and it was nearly pitch black inside. Save for the lights coming from...something neon pink and glowing, curled up in the back of the closet. The half-circular ring of a pink iris backlit by LEDs looked up at him from the ground.

“Mettaton!” Papyrus called, leaving the door open behind him as he stepped further into the pantry. “What are you doing on the floor in the dark?”

“Oh...you’re still here?” Mettaton muttered, not giving acknowledgement to Papyrus’s question. He looked away, cheek pressed to the back wall. The light of his eye reflected off something glass that he brought up to his mouth, in the darkness Papyrus wasn’t able to make out exactly what it was. “That’s a shocker.”

‘You’re still here’…? What did he mean by that?

“I thought you came in here to retrieve a jar?” Papyrus asked, playing dumb, not wanting to call Mettaton out on his odd behaviour directly, or come off as scolding him for hiding.

“Mmm...I was…” Mettaton lowered the thing in his hand away from his lips, pressing his face into his folded up knees. “Found one, then kind of lost the plot…”

“Well, I am sure you cannot find your “plot” in the dark.” Papyrus pointed out, reaching up to find the pull chain on the light.

Mettaton hissed when the lights flashed on, throwing his arm up to shield his eyes from the assaulting brightness. Now that he could see, Papyrus found that Mettaton had curled himself up into a ball in the back of the closet; knees pulled up to his chest and head resting against the wall. The thing in his hand was, in fact, a mason jar without it’s lid, so he hadn’t been lying in that regard. But where did the strawberries go…? 

Papyrus looked around to see if he could find them, and noticed the open container resting on one of the lower shelves, close to where Mettaton was sitting. Though it was now empty of vodka and...most of the strawberries. Papyrus looked back at the jar in Mettaton’s hand to get a better look at it. It was filled with a clear liquid and a few bright red strawberries...didn’t really take a detective to figure it out, now did it? He also noticed by Mettaton’s side was one of those dusty old wine bottles he’d noticed before, now having blank fingerprints in the thin layer of dust and the cap popped off. It had finally been opened after god knows how long, and it was empty.

Papyrus was starting to form a conclusion here, but he didn’t want to come right out and accuse Mettaton of what he was thinking.

“I thought those were for the cake?” Papyrus asked instead, nodding towards the empty container.

Mettaton followed his gaze, and let out a dark, hollow giggle, “Oopsie~” He near-purred, picking his jar from the floor again and sticking his fingers in it. His claws were outstretched from their housing as he tried to hook one of the strawberries that had sunk to the bottom, tongue poking out of his mouth as he concentrated.

Papyrus let out a deep sigh, deciding to join Mettaton on the floor. He sat down and crossed his legs, hands folded in his lap. “That’s alright, I am sure it will taste wonderful regardless!"

“Didn’...strain it very well…” Mettaton mumbled, finally hooking a claw into the fruit that escaped his grasp. He pulled it out of the jar triumphantly and, still snagged on his claw, popped it in his mouth. He hummed in content, thunking his head on the back wall again.

Papyrus frowned, he had been trying to not point out the elephant in the room but..it was getting kind of hard not to. “You are drunk.”

Mettaton grinned, his pupil turned to glitching and static as it tried to shift into a star. “Youuu guessed it, darling~!!” He cooed, throwing one hand to the air as if celebrating a correct answer on one of his game shows. “Gold star for you~!!”

Mettaton’s hand bounced off one of the shelves as he waved it around haphazardly, giving a small “ouch” and bringing it back down. He examined his wrist with a frown, glaring at it as if it was it’s fault it had hit something. And how dare it hurt after it’d been slammed into a shelf. Eventually he lost interest in glaring at it, instead just slumping against the wall again and biting down on it. 

Ah, oh dear. Papyrus recalled his behavior from that morning, and something about “not your fingers”. He wasn’t brave enough around Mettaton just yet to go and start yanking his limbs around, but he did reach out to lightly tap the robot on his wrist.

“If I may make a request, please do not bite on your hands? If you’d like, I can get you something else to chew on?” He asked, trying to give a smile to show he wasn’t mocking the habit. Just...that he’d redirect it to something that wasn’t the delicate machinery that made up his hands.

Mettaton stared at him, expression hard to read, but he did as he was told and pulled his teeth out of himself. He put his hand back on the ground, going back to staring at it, he gave no response to the offer of another item to chew on. An issue for another time. 

As for the here and now, there were more pressing issues to address than Mettaton’s biting habit. Thus far, Mettaton had not been very receptive to Papyrus trying to get him to open up about his feelings. But, as the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed...

“Pardon me for being blunt, but,” Papyrus began, keeping his voice low and slow. “Why are you in the dark, drunk?”

“Wellll, cauusee uhm…” Mettaton slurred, stirring his finger around in the jar. Gaze transfixed by the loose seeds swirling around in the liquor rather than Papyrus’s face, “‘Cause I was...drinkin’...”

“I see, that makes sense,” Papyrus nodded, taking that as a satisfactory answer. He hoped that not coming off as accusatory or scolding would get him farther than he had in his previous attempts. “And, why were you drinking?”

“Ohhh...well, isn’t it obvious?” Mettaton giggled again. His stirring ceased, looking up at Papyrus finally with a shaky grin. “You’re mad a’me~”

Papyrus tilted his head, confused, “Mad at you? I am not mad at you, Mettaton. Why do you think that?”

His giggling ceased, and his grin faltered. Again he cast his gaze downwards to stare blankly into his jar. “Because...cause uhm...I got mean at Undyne. And shee...shee’s your friend? Yea? Annd so now you’re uh…” He hiccuped, tears pricking at the corner of his eye as he went on. “And-and now you know I’m a terri-terribuble- Shitty fucking person. And now you hate me too.”

Again, everything seemed to circle back to the Undyne scenario. Or, at least on the surface it seemed like that. Was that really what this was all about? Mettaton thought he was mad at him because of how he'd treated Undyne? Sure, admittedly he was a bit frustrated at it, but he wasn’t angry. For the most part, he was just lost on what exactly the beef was between the two. Especially after Undyne had gone out of her way to do errands for them. He had been nothing but trying to understand where this tension originated from, and wanting to offer ways to resolve it. If anything, the whole situation just made him confused. But not angry or upset, and definitely not resentful. But somehow Mettaton had got it warped into his head that Papyrus hated him. Again, he couldn’t figure out where point A met point B for that conclusion to even occur to the star.

Papyrus didn’t know what to say, so instead he tried to console to some degree. “No need to cry! I promise, that is not the situation at all!” He paused, wondering if he should even ask this. “Though...I must ask, why do you keep thinking that others hate you?”

Admittedly, that was probably the farthest thing from the correct question to ask here. The more appropriate one would’ve probably been something more along the lines of “are you okay?” or “how can I help?”. But those weren’t the questions Papyrus wanted an answer to, because he already knew the answers to those. Clearly Mettaton was not okay, and Papyrus at least hoped he could help. But, he needed to understand why this was happening in order to help. He couldn’t make head nor tail of it on his own. It was just..baffling to him that Mettaton kept jumping to this wild conclusion that he was this immensely hated individual.

It became abundantly clear that it was the wrong question to ask when Mettaton didn’t reply. He just went back to sipping from his makeshift glass, bringing the mason jar to his lips. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on your viewpoint, Mettaton had mostly drained the jar of it’s liquor, there was only a few sips left of it. He pulled the glass away from his lips when he noticed, staring at it like he had to see it to believe it. Once he confirmed to himself that, yes, indeed, the jar was empty, he loosened his grip on it until it clattered to the floor. Must’ve been pretty resilient glass, as instead of shattering into a million pieces when it hit the ground, it just rolled until it was stopped by the side of Mettaton’s foot.

Papyrus didn’t know how to deal with drunk people, he didn’t have much experience with such a thing. The only time he could really remember spending a significant amount of time around a drunk person was that time that Undyne was drunk at DnD night. Which, coincidentally enough, had been Mettaton’s fault. Apparently she and him had been drinking before the session. But, even though Mettaton had been involved then too, this was a much different situation. Papyrus remembered seeing in movies that sometimes you have drunk people coffee, and that was supposed to sober them up. But it was getting quite late, much too late for coffee at least. 

Well, he wasn’t lifting any spirits besides the alcoholic kind by sitting on the floor in a closet. 

“When is the last time you’ve been outside?” Papyrus asked, “As in, stayed out there for a good while?”

Mettaton took a good minute to respond, which was already answer enough. But he did speak, “Hm...Can’t remember. Didn’t get a lot of outside time at the hospital…” 

“I think you need some fresh air, then.” Papyrus decided, “Do you have a balcony?”

“Mmhm, I do.” Mettaton nodded, flopping so hard against the back wall it caused a resounding  _ clunk _ . “It’s through the...laundry room, haven’t been out there in a while.” 

“Well, what a wonderful time to revisit it, then!” Papyrus slipped his hands under Mettaton’s armpits, pulling the robot with him as he stood back up. 

Mettaton went without protest, but he did look very surprised. He hung there much like a cat held in a similar fashion, wide-eyed at the skeleton who’d yet again showed a scary amount of strength. Of course it was less of a feat than the first time, as he wasn’t being picked up completely, and this time Papyrus huffed as Mettaton stumbled against him instead of holding his own weight. 

As Mettaton leaned against Papyrus, the middle of his chest resting somewhere on the top of his skull, he was starting to realize he hadn’t taken Mettaton’s significant height over him into account.

“Ah - Mettaton, if you could stand on your own, please?” Papyrus asked gently, his arms starting to feel sore.

Upon request, Mettaton did his best to straighten himself back up, giving papyrus a dull glance. Trying to keep his cheery demeanor, Papyrus returned that with a wide smile.

“So! To the balcony?” Papyrus prompted again, in case Mettaton had somehow forgotten.

“Right, right,” Mettaton put his hand to his forehead, rubbing fingers into the bridge of his nose. The headache was starting to come on. “It’s...this way.”

Mettaton wobbled a little bit as he started to walk, but managed to stay upright. He didn’t bother to turn off the pantry light as he walked back into the kitchen. Papyrus trailed close behind him, a little too close, actually. He just wanted to make sure Mettaton wouldn’t fall! He was led through the kitchen, around the corner that housed the closet, and opened a door at their end of the hallway that Papyrus hadn’t gone into yet. It was a laundry room, he discovered as Mettaton opened it up and went through it. Well, that answered at least one question!

At the end of that room was a glass door, covered in a blackout curtain that Mettaton had to push to the side to get to the lock that he fumbled at for a bit. Or, locks plural it seemed. Papyrus noticed it had both a deadlock and a chain bolt, as well as a strange security lock around the knob itself. His front door didn’t even have that many locks on it, so why did this one have so many…? Just as Papyrus was about to offer to undo the locks for him, Mettaton finally got it, and pushed it open with his shoulder.

“It’s kinda a mess, sorry.” Mettaton muttered as he stepped through, squinting at the back wall. “Uh - shit, where’s the lights…”

As Mettaton wandered off to find the light controls, Papyrus looked around the outside area. He had to admit, he was a bit awestruck. The balcony was not only huge, but absolutely gorgeous. It wasn’t an entirely open space like Papyrus had been expecting, instead it had a slatted ceiling high overhead, with just enough spaces between the gaps to see the rapidly darkening sky. To the right, where they had entered from, was a small space where Mettaton kept some greenery and a hanging chair. A lot of the plants seemed wilted, though the many succulents in cute little pots seemed fine. Papyrus reached out to hold the leaf of a vine-like plant between his fingers, noting the heart-shaped leaves seemed relatively healthy. It made sense that Mettaton was better with plants that didn’t need much water. He made a mental note that maybe he should come out and water the other ones someday.

In the off-center of the space was a small pool, only about 3ft deep, slim and rectangular. It was surrounded on all sides by black and white marble, with a few steps down to a seating area near the railing of the balcony. Similar to the interior design of the apartment, it was walled off at the edge by plexiglass. Though here it was chest-height rather than waist-height. That made sense, he supposed, when you compared protecting someone from falling to the bottom floor of a house versus falling fifty stories belo. There were some soft looking chairs close to the railing, and at the far end of the pool, opposite to where Papyrus currently stood, was a daybed with a canopy and a string of warm toned fairy lights wound around the top of it. Mettaton seemed quite fond of those. The whole space was lit up, once Mettaton had found the switch, by dangling light bulbs, strings at varying lengths, that hung above the pool and gently twinkled in and out. They looked like falling stars, or maybe backlit rain, frozen in time.

The only odd thing Papyrus noticed was at the edge of the balcony, above the glass railing, it wasn’t open air, but instead protected by a security gate. Similar to those they put in front of a closed store at a mall. To be honest, it kind of ruined the mood, and looked very out of place compared to the rest of the balcony’s design.

After he’d finished turning on the lights, Mettaton made a beeline to the daybed, ripping aside the curtain and flopping onto it face-first, his arms looping around his head. Papyrus found a folded up lawn chair leaning against the wall, he picked it up under his arm and brought it closer to where Mettaton was. He folded it out next to the daybed, and leaned back into it, folding his hands in his lap and turning his head to look at the sky through the gaps in the roofing.

“See! Is this not much better than sitting inside a dark closet?”

“Don’t patronize me.” Mettaton groaned, feeling around for a pillow and hugging it to his chest. He rolled over onto his side, curling his body around it. “I’m not a child.”

“It was not my intention to treat you as such.” Papyrus clarified, he didn’t hear Mettaton give a response beyond a quiet grunt of acknowledgement.

Hm...Mettaton didn’t seem to be in the most talkative of moods right now. So instead, he decided to try and enjoy the view, or as much as he could of it, anyway. He looked over towards the edge of the balcony, at that ugly gate caging everything in. It wasn’t blocking the outside, by any means, but it did kind of suck to have to peer at the city lights and the small bit of coastline that was visible from this angle through bars. But the cool night air still flowed through just fine, and that’s what was important. Still, though, it would’ve been nice to see better...

“Would you like me to move aside the gate for you?” Papyrus offered, turning his attention towards Mettaton once again.

“Y’can’t.” Mettaton still wouldn’t face him, “There aren’t any keys to it. Unless you just so happen to have a pair of bolt cutters on you, in which case be my guest.”

“Oh…” Well, darn, that was a shame. But he did wonder why he wouldn’t have any keys to something he owned.

“I suppose that is the smartest design choice!” Papyrus reasoned, mostly to himself, “We are rather high up, kudos to you for keeping safety in mind over aesthetic!”

“Wasn’t my idea, didn’t install it.” Mettaton finally sat upright, scooting up to rest his back against the wall. He still hugged the pillow to his chest, but this time brought his knees up to the other side of it and used it as a chin rest.”Well...I did, long time ago, keeps birds out...but, didn’t use to be impossible to open.”

“Oh?” Papyrus tilted his head, “Why change it, then?”

Mettaton cast his gaze to the ground, giving Papyrus the silent treatment again.

Holding a conversation with Mettaton was...surprisingly difficult. If he didn’t like what you were saying to him, or just didn’t like the topic, he would simply drop off all talking to you. Didn’t matter who you were, if you were his friend, if you were the only person in the room, you got the same treatement regardless. If he didn’t want to talk to you anymore, he made it very clear. The upside was he was usually willing to strike up a conversation with just about anybody, and he was nine times out of ten the one to initiate the interaction. The challenge came in keeping his attention long enough to have a meaningful talk, and to not say anything to make him mad at you.

Which was why Papyrus wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Mettaton kept refusing to talk to him. There was no doubting he was a little bit hurt. But considering he was Mettaton’s sole source of companionship for the foreseeable near future, there wasn’t much he could do except keep at it. And maybe eventually he’d land on a topic that wouldn’t just cause Mettaton to clam up.

“Why are you still here, anyway?” Mettaton broke the silence with. Well, that took the task away of finding a topic, at least! Well, somewhat..he had been hoping of more of a light hearted topic. Like Mettaton telling him about his plants, or something of the like.

“What do you mean?” 

“Why haven’t you left yet?” Mettaton reiterated, as if rewording it slightly would make his question more clear, “You know, packed your bags, slipped away while I’m not looking? Go back home, never mention it to me, and give Alphys some flimsy excuse as to why you couldn’t take it anymore...I was giving you a chance to.”

Was...Mettaton kicking him out? Did he want him to leave? But he’d only been here a little over one day, and the thought that the two of them had been having fun thus far, for the most part! Papyrus had been having fun, at least!

“Well! I am not one to break a promise! And I did make a promise to Alphys!” Papyrus said confidently, and then hesitated on the next part, “Do...you want me to leave?”

“No, no, that’s not it…” Mettaton sighed, running his fingers through his hair. He stared off into space, going quiet again.

Papyrus tried not to dwell on it too much. As long as he was for sure Mettaton wasn’t making him leave, he didn’t see much need to, anyway. He decided to relax back into his chair. If Mettaton wasn’t in a chatty mood, he’d respect that, sometimes it was nice to simply enjoy one another’s presence. He wasn’t sure a drunk person had much in terms of meaningful conversation anyway.

Papyrus noticed that he couldn’t hear any crickets chirping, or the sounds of the nocturnal birds he was used to hanging out in the trees around his house. Or...really any night time sounds he was accustomed to. Up this high, he couldn’t even hear the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach below, or cars zipping by on the highways. It was kind of eerie, once he thought about it too hard. It was like being fed a sterilized version of the outdoors at night, in a box with a pretty, glittery coating.

“It’s just that,” Mettaton broke the silence with, suddenly after a good ten minutes of quiet. Causing Papyrus to jump just a little. “The first time I met you, you nearly passed out in excitement. You were over the moon just to be talking to me. Isn’t it...awful? To...to see me like this? Aren't you disgusted that I’ve ruined that image for you? Don’t you hate the fact that I’m actually an awful fucking person who doesn’t deserve any of this?”

...Where had that come from? “Mettaton, are you alright?”

“Just - answer the question,” Mettaton snapped, waving his hand as if trying to give him a command. “Don’t you hate this? Isn’t it the most sickening thing in the world to see me like this?”

Papyrus blinked, jaw dropped. He wasn’t really - sure what to say to any of that. Again, he was at a loss for words, and confused on what had happened to flip into a situation like this again. He just stared at Mettaton dumbly, which only seemed to make the robot more irritated.

His silence caused Mettaton to look in Papyrus’s direction, his eyes burning something hateful. “ANSWER THE QUESTION!”

“I - Please do not shout.” Papyrus finally managed to come up with, because that was something he actually knew how to comment on. “I believe you are working yourself up again. I do not think any of those things about you. Have I...given off the impression that I do? If so, I am deeply sorry.”

Mettaton’s mood once again flipped on a time. His anger faltered, eye going wide in shock. He balled up tight, biting down on the side of his hand again, looking like he was about to cry. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry-”

“It’s alright.” Papyrus reassured him, keeping his voice even and low. Wanting to make it clear he wasn’t mad at him for the outburst. “Do you want to talk about it?”

On the bright side, or a very dim bright side, he had been trying to get Mettaton to talk about his feelings this whole time. He wanted to understand where Mettaton was coming from, to get where these intrusive thoughts were forming. He hated that he had to inadvertently get Mettaton drunk and hysterical to do it but...it was a start, at least?

Mettaton stopped biting on himself when Papyrus spoke, instead looping his arms multiple times around himself and perching his chin on top of the pillow again. He really was thinking about it, which was a good sign. “...Do you ever feel like you have this...void in your chest? That nothing can really fill, no matter how much you give it what it wants?”

“I...can’t say I do, I’m sorry.” Papyrus admitted truthfully, giving Mettaton a small frown.

Mettaton sighed, scrubbing at his face and squeezing his visible eye shut. “You...you wouldn’t get it. This is stupid, forget it.”

“I cannot say I “get it”, but I would like to try to understand.” Papyrus scooted his chair a little bit closer to the daybed, leaning forward on his knees. “Tell me more about this chest void? It is not a literal hole, is it? If so, I believe you should tell Alphys about it.”

“Just. Forget I mentioned it, okay?” Mettaton snapped, “Like I said, it’s stupid, I’m pathetic. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, alright then,” Papyrus sat back again, “I will not pressure you into talking about it if you do not want to. But, I would like you to know, I am not angry at you. And I do not hate you or think you are awful and disgusting. Is that…a satisfactory answer to your line of questioning?”

“...I guess so…” The back of Mettaton’s head made a hollow thunk as he rested it against the wall, staring at the roof of his canopy bed.

The two sat in silence for a while after that. Papyrus made himself comfortable and folded his hands over his chest, leaning back enough to see the stars through the roof above. Or at least what he could see of them that wasn’t drowned out by the overhead lights. The roof and the bright lights made the whole experience a bit less scenic, but it was pretty nonetheless. As he sat there for a while, he couldn’t help but think about how different it was to experience the night from this point of view. Papyrus enjoyed sitting outside at night, he and Sans had a firepit in their backyard that sometimes they would light, pull up a chair, and just talk and enjoy the night. About whatever, really; their days, something they’d seen on TV, what was going on in each other’s lives. It was nice to just enjoy each other’s company, next to a warm fire under the stars. Sometimes they’d invite other people over too. Toriel tended to join in on the conversation, with Frisk roasting marshmallows next to her. Undyne would make the night a little less peaceful, she liked to throw things into the fire just to see what would happen. But, all in all, it was great fun no matter what happened or who decided to show up.

But here, in what felt like a pretty cage miles above the rest of the world...it felt different. Bugs didn’t fly this high, there weren’t any chirping crickets or moths flocking to the lightbulbs that dangled from above. It was all too bright, the white marble floors felt too clean, and the hanging lights mimicking stars paled in comparison to the real thing just on the other side of the gate. The warmth of company, the feeling of being in nature, it was all stripped away and sanitized. Reserved to the dying potted plants tucked into one corner and pretty lights that only gave the feeling of starlight. They reflected off the water the same, though, Papyrus turning his attention to the perfectly still pool. Even that felt alien, there was no breezes to cause small disturbances in the pool, making it look like a sheet of glass. This whole space felt like a mockery of a backyard, built by someone who’d never actually seen one. It was pretty, sure, but so so much lonelier than the real thing.

“I can’t even swim, you know.” Mettaton said quietly, sharing the view of the lights in the pool. “I’m too heavy, I just sink to the bottom. I don’t even know why I asked for that thing to be installed.”

Papyrus looked up, watching Mettaton carefully. He was still curled up tightly, his eye dimmed to a dull magenta, reflecting the faux starlight in it’s glass surface.

“Skeletons don’t tend to make very good swimmers either,” Papyrus agreed, “We also tend to sink! There isn’t much of us that is buoyant, after all! Whenever I go to the beach, or just the pool that Undyne has, I tend to need a floatie!” He rubbed his chin in thought, leaning far back into his chair again, “Though, I don’t think those would work for you. There is quite a difference between a skeleton and a robot!”

Mettaton nodded, dull expression unchanging. “Do you ever think about what would happen if...if you fell to the bottom of a pool and just...stayed there for a while?”

The sudden change of tone shocked Papyrus out of his comfort zone, staring Mettaton down with a wide-eyed expression. “I- well, that sounds, uhm...rather unpleasant. Though, I guess hypothetically I could? I don’t need to breathe, after all.”

“Neither do I. But I do have vents. So I guess those would cause an issue…” Mettaton’s eye looked as glassy as the surface of the water he continued to stare at. “I think...I think I’d probably rust after a while. I wonder if I’d even feel it, or if I’d just run out of batteries first.”

He trailed off for a minute, “...Do you think anyone would find me?”

“Well, I…” Papyrus didn’t know what to say. That was...a lot, to be perfectly honest. He didn’t like where Mettaton’s mind was going, if he was implying what Papyrus thought he was implying. It was about as startling as a slap to a face, but ten times as scary.

“Well, I..I think you’d make a lot of people very sad.” Was what he finally settled on, not sure what else he could offer.

“Oh, I’m quite sure of it.” Mettaton snorted, leaning his head back to stare at the sky. “I can see it now, the in memoriams, the TV stations running marathons of my shows. Gone too soon, they’d say...I’d give it about a wee, and then after that I don’t think anyone would care too much. Alphys, Maybe. But she’d get over me soon enough too. She has Undyne to keep her company now, after all. She doesn’t really need me anymore.”

“I would care.”

“Oh, would you now?” Mettaton grinned, “I don’t think you would, not really, anyway. You’d miss seeing my new content, seeing my face on the screen. But that’s about it. Especially now that you know what I’m really like. People only like me because I’m fake.”

He stretched his legs out in front of him, metal joints giving a faint pop as they were finally freed from the tight ball they’d been wound up into. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking like this. I’m probably scaring you.”

“Well, probably not.” Papyrus agreed. “Erm - talking like that, I mean.”

He stopped when he realized how that came off, pausing to rethink his phrasing. “I mean...I will not lie to you and say that you aren’t scaring me with that kind of talk. But it is because I care, and it makes me afraid that you are thinking like this.”

Mettaton stared at his feet, wrapping his arms tightly around his chest and idly clicking the toes of his boots together. Papyrus had lost him again, and he sighed at that fact.

“I...Will not pressure you into talking about it more if you do not wish to.” He said, and in a moment of bravery, got up from his lawn chair. Placing himself down on the canopy bed, right next to Mettaton. He kept a small distance between the two, at least, and folded his hands in his lap. Mettaton gave no protest, so he stayed.

“...You do know that I care about you for more than just the TV shows you produce?”

Again, he did not answer, But Papyrus continued on anyway. He wanted his thoughts to be put out in the world, even if they fell on deaf ears. He...thought Mettaton needed to hear this, as much as the robot was denying it.

“I know you probably won’t believe it, but...I...I understand what it’s like to put up a face around others. It is a very lonely experience,” He began, looking to the ground as well. “I cannot say I can entirely relate to what you are saying, but I do want to understand what you are feeling like, and why. I do consider you a friend, and I care about you. And you are very important to many people, even without your stage persona, and to more than just Alphys...I don’t think your fans, or anyone else, would react as negatively as you may think to see you as...less than perfect. Sometimes it’s nice to see your idols as regular people, it makes people feel good about themselves to see even superstars experience the same thing they do, and that they aren’t alone on things…” Papyrus looked up from the ground, tilting his head to look at the roof of the canopy. “And - it’s why I am sorry if I have come off as overbearing, but I would like you to know you aren’t alone either. I do not think lesser of you to see you like this, in fact, I believe it makes you more...Normal.”

Papyrus didn’t have high hopes for a response, but he waited for one anyway. Mettaton continued to be quiet, staring at his reflection in the pool. Papyrus gave up, sighing and about to get up to return back to his own seat. As he braced his hands on the edge of the mattress to push himself up, he felt something lay against his shoulder, causing Papyrus to freeze.

“It’s cold tonight.”

...

“...It is, isn’t it?”


End file.
